Italy Day 4: Woke up way too late! We had bought tickets for the 8 am train but our hotel never gave us our wakeup call!!! Grrrrr. We were not happy. We had to wait until 11am for the next train so we had breakfast at the hotel and organized our bags, then we went to a little supermarket to get some food for the day. That was an interesting experience, I was in the produce section and this little old lady kept glaring at me and I couldn't figure out why, then I noticed that she had a little plastic glove on the hand she was using to pickup her fruit, oops! I guess that's "polite" over there. I felt bad for spreading my cooties all over their fruit. Live and learn. Bryan found a nice lady to ask some questions about some of the cheese and we bought some provolone picante cheese, which with cheese in Italy picante means strong, not hot. It was sooo good. We had it with some prociutto and bread from the bakery. We also bought 3 huge bottles of water. Water was so hard to find sometimes! Then we had to lug it all back to the hotel and then with our bags to the train station. The train ride to Florence was nice, we couldn't see a ton, but what we saw was gorgeous. I was always suprised at how much more mediterranian the surrounding were, I don't know why, but I always figured it was more desert-like in Italy. Well, it's not! We got to Florence and walked to our hotel. After we signed for the room the owner said, "Oh, by the way, you can't bring any food into the hotel, we have a problem with rodents." Nice. The hotel was actually okay and the breakfast in the morning was good, their hot chocholate was to die for! Anyways, after we checked in we took a walk around the city. It was fun to see a bit of the night-life. Florence definitely felt more like what I had imagined Italy to be like. It had much more of an old-world feel. (although it also was very modern and hip) We looked at the markets which were just a couple of blocks from our hotel. Can I just say heaven? I loved almost everything I saw and I'm pretty picky. The leather goods were just beautiful. I got myself a pair of gloves and drooled at everything else we passed. Sigh. It was great.