Every morning I have to wake up and thank God that I am on this amazing voyage. This morning, I woke up to the beautiful landscape of Florence and I couldn't but praise God for this amazing love and grace. Everywhere I look I see the amazing beauty that He created and I find myself in awe. I just had to walk outside the little balcony of the hostel and just look out at the horizon and soak in everything that I saw.
Therefore, after a slight later start that we anticipated, my friends and I grabbed some breakfast (Pizza...the breakfast food of champions and college students) we went searching for soap. Holly, one of the friends that I was traveling with today, needed to go to this famous parfumerie to buy her 
mom some soap that she wanted. As we were going through the beautiful rooms, I soon found out that this parfumerie is also one of the oldest pharmacy/apothecary in the world. It was so interesting to learn how they utilized so many of the natural remedies that we still use today to take care of most ailments. I had to snap a few pictures for mom, so she can also see one of the oldest pharmacy in the world. I also had to get some soap because the entire 5-room shop/pharmacy smelled A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Hopefully the soap will be able to capture some of the scent of the store. :)After that fun little excursion, we all went to the leather district and did some more shopping. I had to buy some Murano glass pendants for mom and friends so I went out to do some bargain shopping. I'm not the best negotiator of prices, but I have to say I think I did pretty well. I was able to get several times more than 50% off, so that made me happy. I'm not going to say all that I bought because one, you'd be shocked, and two, some of you will be getting these gifts and I want to keep it a surprise. :)
After the shopping, LaCona and I headed towards Pisa and Cinque Terre while our other friend Holly went back to Rome. If any of you have been to Pisa, you know that there's not much there other than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was a pretty quick 2-hour trip. After taking our very touristy pictures, we went on the hunt for Leaning Tower of Pisa bottle of olive oil for one of our fellow LLCs. Everywhere we went there were bottles of alcohol but not of olive oil. It was so crazy. It just made me think about how many of our students would try to get these bottles of alcohol back onto the ship. :(
Next, we headed to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre means "Five Towns," which is exactly what makes-u the area. We first took the train La Spezia and then took a smaller train to the Riomaggiore, which is the town that we were going to spend the night before hiking the other 4 towns. It was at Riomaggiore where LaCona and I met up with Kevin, a fellow LLC.
Riomaggiore is such a cute little town. It was the perfect town to spend the night. After hiking up to the hostel, which was the highest point of the town, we dropped our stuff off and went to grab some dinner. Quick trivia for my fellow foodies, pesto's birthplace is in the Cinque Terre region...so all I had on my agenda for dinner was to have some great pesto and I can say I was not disappointed. We befriended an older woman, who owns a hostel in town, and she pointed us to a small local restaurant. The food was great, but trying to order food with our very very limited Italian was quite interesting.
After dinner, we walked about the town and grabbed some yummy gelato for dessert as we walked back to our hostel for a good night sleep. We have a huge day of hiking ahead of us so we called it an early night. I can't wait to see the other towns of Cinque Terre. If they look anything like Riomaggiore, it'll be an amazing day!
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