Perugia and Florence

Chocolate Festival in Perugia

Christy, Joyce and I traveled to Perugia from Florence. Perugia is known for it's chocolate and is a quaint town in Tuscany.  It's a small city and located up on a hill, so its a bit chilly.  There were loads of chocolate vendors from Italy, Germany, Spain, and all over Europe at the festival. The idea of the chocolate festival was born out of the Oktoberfest in Munich, where instead of lots of beer there’s lots of chocolate. It was loads of fun and we got to hang out with Kamalia and her cool friend, Hannah (an exchange student from London).  Kamalia and Hannah took us to a delicious gelato place called Grom, which was excellent!  It was a great day in Perugia.  FYI: Had the BEST pesto linguini pasta at Perugia…yummy goodness!!!

 

Florence

Florence is a nice, calm and pretty city.  This was our final big city in Italy.  The next couple of days were filled with touristy attractions.  Here are the highlights: The Duomo, climbed up the dome of the Duomo (which consists of 425 stairs), Ponte Vecchio, Uffizi Gallery (which holds all of the beautiful Renaissance paintings), and the Academia (which holds the stunning Michelangelo's statue of David).  We treated ourselves to an abridged opera of La Boheme at St. Mark's English Cathedral, which included a narrator, four singers and an amazing pianist.  We also did lots of shopping and scored some sweet leather goods (at least I (Joh) scored some really cool leather goods).  I finally got to go on a couple of runs around the city and it was amazing. I ran along the Ponte Vechhio besides the river and then around the duomo, which was so awesome!  We thought that Florence was a really sweet city.