Today was our much anticipated free day to explore Florence. We had the luxury of sleeping in. After, I went on a morning adventure to try to find an allergy pill to cure my runny nose. I walked around the neighborhood and seemed to find the only pharmacy that was closed. Luckily I ran into some people from the trip who told me about an open pharmacy right around the corner.
I entered and said ‘ciao’ and the pharmacist immediately switched to English. Clearly my Italian needs a lot of work. I showed him a picture of what I needed and I was on my way. Now I have two souvenir cold medicines from Italy!
After my adventure I met up with some friends and we went to a coffee shop and bistro called La Menagere. The front of the place sold pottery and flowers, and the rest was dedicated to food and drink. It was a lot larger on the inside than it looked. They offered breakfast foods, sandwiches, salads, and, of course, coffee. I ordered a panini and decided to try Italian coffee once again.
I take back what I said about Italian coffee. Today I figured I might as well give it another try, and ordered an almond cappuccino. It was delicious and sweet, and I hope to find something like it back in the States.
We then walked around to see the different shops. Just as I expected, I am not fashionable enough to pull off most Italian clothing. We wandered for a bit, and even found an H&M.
Then we went out to a place called Il Latine. It opened at 7:30 and there was already a line to get in. We were seated right away. We had come to try some of the Florentine steak that we had heard so much about. Steak is a specialty in Florence, and somebody told us that it was one of the best steaks in the country.
Four of us decided to split the steak because it was very expensive (50 euros). We were told that it would be perfect to split. Although we knew the steak would be big, when it arrived we were still shocked.
The steak was two pounds and bigger than my head. It was incredibly flavorful but a lot rarer than I was used to. We also got really good potatoes to go with it. Since we finished our steak, our servers gave us free limoncello.
We went to an Irish pub across the street from our hotel and met up with some other people from our class, and then we called it a night.