Florence

Since it turns out that 18-year-old boys are basically pretty lazy and not all that interested in seeing the beautiful and interesting historical sights of Rome, we decided to force some culture onto my baby bro.

We took an early bird train to Florence for a day of wandering the streets and eating some delicious steak.

The city is really beautiful, but oh so crowded! People flock to this mecca of art by the millions every year, and since we had chosen Saturday as our day of arrival, we were right in the thick of it.

People wandering around and taking photographs, groups of tourists being led through the streets with little earphones to listen to their guide's commentary, people selling awful reproductions of priceless works of art...you name it, and it was there.

Fortunately for us, we weren't interested in any of that. What we really came for was a delicious, fat, juicy, charbroiled Fiorentine steak, and man did we find it!
There is no other way to describe this beauty except to say that it was outstanding. Not only that, but it was preceeded by three delicious different pastas, and accompanied (of course) by a wonderful red wine. We were in fat belly heaven!
After our meal we hit the streets to check out some of the sites. It'd been a while since we had gone inside any churches, so we did that, and we wandered around a few piazzas, and before we knew it it was time to go! We had to leave a bit early in the afternoon in order for Charles to make it back to Rome in time to go to work at the pub. So, although we didn't do any museums this time around, we will definitely head back there soon!