4/1/12

Day thee in Florence was all about shopping, wandering and just taking in Tuscany. We headed into the town centre at about 11am and proceeded to the footlocker we'd been to excited about the previous day. The night before, on getting back to our hotel room, Andrew decided to try on his shiny new Nike's, only to discover that what he had thought were size 12's were, in fact, size 11's. This meant that our first job of the day taking them back to get the right size. It should have been an easy swap but, as it turns out, not quite. The store did not have any size 12's in stock so, after much umming and ahhing, we were directed to another store in another part of the city where we were told that if they didn't have them there in the right size, we could get a refund. So we walked to the other store, hopeful that we would be able to get it sorted and move on, but alas, it was not meant to be. The other store didn't stock that style of shoe at all so, after trying things like changing insoles and so on, we ended up having to walk back to the other store again. This time, after more umming, offering of gift cards and whatnot, we ended up getting our money back.

After the shoe debacle was sorted, more fun shopping was in order, so we began zigzagging through the beautiful streets of Florence looking at every clothing/shirt/shoe and book store we could find. We meandered over the famous shopping bridge, both sides of which are lined with tiny medieval stores, every one of which is devoted entirely to jewlery making. On the other side of the river I finally found somewhere that sold wax seals, something I'd been looking for for ages, and we had lunch at a lovely cafe, both trying the local traditional foods (rare beef, and bread and veg soup).We then wandered back into the town centre and continued shopping for a bit, where Jess bought a new suitcase to replace hers which had broken. It was raining really heavily and Andrew had no umbrella, so we headed back to the hotel to be rid of our soaked clothes and ate at a restaurant next door. Andrew had a calzone that was bigger than his head!