Libro. Book

Ciao tutti!
It's only 9:45 pm right now, but I am very tired.

So today...Just thinking about it makes me even more tired. I slept in this morning til about 10am. Had a slow start to the morning because I wasn't in a rush to head out today. I got ready and had breakfast and prepared myself for the day. Today's itinerary was to meet up with a friend to go buy books for our class, then dinner at night. So I made up my list and was able to buy 5 books on my Kindle from my list. Thank goodness! You'll see why soon.
Around 1pm I left my house to go meet up with my friend at her apartment near the Duomo. From there her and I headed to the Paperback Exchange Bookstore. This has become one of the most important bookstores in Florence for English speaking people. They always have current books (or can order them for you- which usually takes about 4 or 5 days to arrive, depending on where it's coming from) as well as many different topics including random paperbacks that people exchange. (You can exchange your book for store credit. Which is awesome for a book store, because you could just keep coming back and keep exchanging like a regular library. And if you just LOVE the book, no need to return it!)
So I showed one of the lady's my list and she went about the store gathering up all the books I needed.
This is what I had to put into my backpack.

These aren't even all of my books! I have the 5 books that I purchased on my kindle and 2 free ones that I got on my kindle. Links to some books available for free online. As well as one more book that the bookstore did not have in at the moment. Plus 2 textbooks and 2 readers (copies of textbook pages). It's safe to say that it will be a busy semester. The good thing is that all of these readings are directly related to Florence (present or past) or Italy.

My back hurts from carrying these around.

After getting books we went to get some lunch. We were so hungry that we ate our sandwiches before we even had time to get our cameras out. My apologies. The panino was delicious. It had some prosciutto, cheese, and arugula on it.

We then went to the photocopy store to purchase our readers. We were there for an hour. Standing.  It was very busy, but eventually we got what we needed and went along our way. We were going to meet up with a few other people from our program for dinner, so we went to drop off all of my books at my friends apartment so I wouldn't have to carry them around all day. On our way I was looking for some black boots because I was sick of wearing my rain boots everyday and everyone wears boots. I was able to find a pair of black boots for 24 euro! If I ruin them by the end of my semester from too much walking I will have no problem leaving them behind at that price! Definitely a good deal for my purposes.

At 6:30 we met up with our friends outside the Duomo and headed to dinner. We went to one of the most famous panino shops in Florence. There wasn't really a menu, so we asked the guy to make us what ever was the most popular. We have no idea what exactly was on it, but this was our guess. Focaccia bread, a pecorino spread (not slices), some artichokes, eggplant (some of us got zucchini) and some prosciutto. It was one of the most interesting (but good) things I've ever eaten. That definitely would not have been something I would've asked for in the U.S., but standing on the streets of Italy eating it sure made it taste good!

 

After our extremely large panino dinner we headed off for some gelato at one of the best gelateria's in Florence.

 

I got Crem de Gram (which is the specialty concoction of the gelateria), coconut and chocolate, and cioccolato extranoir (extra dark). All three were absolutely delicious. The crem de gram, I don't even thing I could explain it, but it was good, and had little cookie things in it. (Kind of like graham crackers.) The coconut and chocolate tasted like the best mounds bar you've ever had. The extra dark chocolate, is EXTRA dark. It is nothing compared to the dark chocolate in the U.S.. I literally coughed after my first bite because it was so dark and rich that I lost my breath. I'm not kidding.

I will definitely be going back to try more of their many flavors!

 

After dessert we walked around a little bit. Here's some pictures of what we saw!

 

That plaque (little rectangular shape you see under those windows) has an enscription on it. It marks the height of the water when the Arno river flooded. I forgot the exact date of when this happened, but apparently the river floods quite a bit. We were told then when it rains a lot for quite a few days that you can see many locals looking down into the river to check the water level. (Note: This road is not directly next to the river. It is about a block away.)

 

This was some street chalk art that we saw a guy working on. I'm not sure what painting it is exactly, but an older Italian woman that was looking as well told us that the actual painting is in the Vatican Museum in Rome.

 

 

This is a picture of the tower of Palazza Vecchio (previously known as Palazza della Signoria). Remember yesterday when I was telling you about the city hall that was built as a castle?? Yea. This is it.

 

Well that was all for me for today! After walking around for a bit, I decided to head home to rest up for another long day tomorrow! We're heading to Fiesole!!

 

A domani!