Two Brunettes in a World of Blondes: Florentine Adventures-Betsy

Carlyn and I returned to Copenhagen extremely late Sunday night after a fantastic few days of good food, wine, and friends.

On Friday, Becca, Carlyn, and I had quite the journey ahead of us. When we looked at flights two weeks ago, flights into Rome were substantially less expensive than direct flights to Florence. So, we decided that we should fly into Florence and take the train through Italy. Honestly, I am extremely proud of our navigation skills. We woke up early Friday morning and quickly arrived at the Copenhagen airport. We were all extremely excited because Katsrup airport boasts the ONLY Starbucks in all of Copenhagen. My day was already made by 9:30 due to the skinny vanilla latte.

Once we landed in Rome, we had to get from the airport to the train station. Our driver (thanks dad!) picked us up at the airport and after some paninis we were on our way. Although this may seem like a boring car ride, in reality it was the quickest tour of Rome I have ever had. In only 45 minutes we saw the Vatican, the Colosseum, and the roman forum. As we sped by the sights (Italians are crazy drivers) our driver quickly pointed out all of the important things to see. We finally arrived at the train station and successfully bought the correct ticket to Florence despite the language barrier.

When we arrived in Florence, we were greeted by tour guide Taylor who had made bruschetta and brie for us and had already purchased several bottles of wine. McCallen, Hannah, and Kara soon joined and we spent the afternoon sipping wine and catching up. We eventually changed for dinner and took a stroll down to the PonteVecchio before heading to dinner.

I can pretty much sum up our dinner by saying it was one of the best meals of my entire life. We went to La Giostra, which is apparently the best restaurant in Tuscany. We did very little ordering throughout dinner, and the chef kept bringing us various assortments of appetizers and drinks. We had persecco, wine, grapa, and lemoncello to top off the night My food, beef carpaccio and pear ravioli, was unbelievable.

I think the waiters and the chef were not used to having large groups of young girls in their restaurant because they paid us an unbelievable amount of attention that evening. After forcing the chef to take a shot of grapa, we concluded the evening with this gem of a picture.

After dinner we quickly headed to a bar called Shots, that serves, well, shots. Mostly shots involving flames. Although we intended to head to the nightclub Space, it was already very late and after a long day of traveling we were tired. We spent the remainder of the night lying on the steps of the Duomo with our new American friends.

We were up around 11 the next day, and tour guide Taylor showed us around Florence. We saw the Piazza della Repubblica, a historical orphanage, and eventually made our way to an Italian market. However, this is not the touristy Italian market that most visitors go to. We were the only Americans in the whole place, and I decided to take the opportunity to try a Florentine favorite: fried dough. McCallen and Hannah awoke around 1 and met us for paninis and gelato, and we then decided to hike to a piazza that gave us an amazing view of the city.

That evening, we went to a second Italian restaurant called Il Latini. This was more of a family style restaurant, and the second we sat down they started bringing us multiple courses including prosciutto & melon, gnocchi, ravioli, and steak. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been so full in my entire life. That evening, we went to an outdoor nightclub called Central Park and eventually made our way home around 3:30.