Florence, Italy & Avignon, France.

This post will combine our adventures in two very beautiful, wonderful cities. After Rome, we headed to Florence, and got to once again meet up with and stay at the same hostel as Bri! It was a darling little hostel, with a really great layout and even free meals and wine! It was just a stone´s throw away from Le Duomo. The first time you see it, you are truly blown away. The outside is a piece of artwork in itself. Thank goodness the inside is free though, because it pretty much looks like they used so much paint on the outside, they didn´t have anything left to decorate the inside. Pretty blah. Us girls went to the Uffizi Gallery, and saw probably enough portraits of ¨Madonna and Child¨ to last us a liftime! We saw the real Adam and Eve paintings though, which was COOL. We strolled around the bustling Florence market, and Bri bought a beautiful leather jacket, and Bailey bought a real Italian leather purse. I enjoyed just standing really close to them and smelling them for extended amounts of time. It was nice. We strolled along Ponte Vecchio and went out for ¨HOLY CRAP PIZZA!¨. 
We met up with our friend Steve, whom we met in Rome. He is such a fantastic lad. Us four went down to a pub called Lion´s Fountain, and spent the night laughing, discussing, and singing as loud as our lungs could carry us.
Florence is such a darling, romantic city. We were blessed with beautiful weather, so we´re able to wander the streets and explore every corner and curve. On our last day, us girls went to see The Basilica of Santa Croce, had gelato twice within the span of an hour and hiked up to Piazzale Michelangelo, to be graced with the most amazing view over the entire city. 

After we left Florence, we made our way to Avignon. We had to make a bit of an unexpected pit stop in the Italian city Ventimiglia. We stayed a night there, and made sure that our last day in Italy was spent eating gelato. Duh. We got on a train and we were off to France! We arrived in Avignon and checked into our hostel, which was on the fabulous Rue de la Republique. There was a little Christmas market at the end of our street and this might not be any sort of interest to any of you, but our hostel beds had curtains around them. CURTAINS. Anyone who has ever stayed in a hostel knows how awesome this is. Privacy is definately something you give up while travelling. There isn´t a whole lot of sights to see in Avignon, so we mostly walked around and enjoyed the city. We did go to Palais des Papes (Pope´s Palace), as well as Pont D'Avignon. It did rain quite a bit while we were there, so we spent those moments mostly eating croissants. Don´t judge us...nothing beats French croissants. 

M & B