Adventures in Italy: Florence
hey everyone welcome and welcome back to another episode of Around the World with Ashley today's episode is part three of my adventures in Italy parts one and two were all about my time in Rome and I was there for a pretty long time like 5 days so it made sense to split that up my entire time in Florence will be covered in this video this was my first time ever in Florence and I had such a great time like I will be back i recommend that anyone who is considering going to Italy should put on their list from the food to the experiences it was just a really great time and I hope that I can go back and actually visit when it's warm it seems like it'll be a really great place to be able to walk along the river and it's not like 40 50° all right that's enough from me for now let's dive right into this episode [Music] it's Wednesday and honestly guys this is probably the most jam-packed day that we had in Florence it probably wasn't until I was actually creating this video that I realized just how much stuff we were doing every single day i don't know how you guys are maybe let me know in the comments but some people when they go on vacation they're the person who just kind of wants to sit relax let the agenda plan itself or they're like "What agenda we're just going to kind of go with the flow." And then there are other people who like to have things planned they like to have like a program they want to know what they're going to do what time they're going to wake up they want to maximize what they're doing in a vacation you might be able to guess I am kind of on the latter side i like to be the person who kind of like plans maximizes what we do but also not like to the extent where it's not enjoyable so I'm not trying to wake up at 6:00 a.m every single day to go do something but there may be a day where we do get up at 6:00 a.m because we want to go to an excursion that's a little further away for example like when I was in Rome we got up at the crack of dawn to go on that Tuscany day trip did not do that twice would not do that multiple days in a row but it was so worth it actually having that on the agenda and kind of pushing ourselves to do that so Wednesday was jam-packed we started off by going to the train station so you guys saw me pack up everything in my last video which was quite a journey i had already been in Paris for a week before so I had stuff that I had bought in Paris clothes that I had used in Paris and then I came to Italy for a week and then I'm seeing stuff in Italy that I want to buy and I'm shopping there and not to mention I also came over with a much larger checked bag when I got off of my flight from Atlanta to Paris I realized that my bag was broken one of the wheels was just completely gone from the bag i'm having to like drag it through the airport on three wheels i have my other bag with me i'm trying to figure out where to meet people and all this stuff and didn't realize that in order to file a claim for a broken bag you have to do it in the airport so I completely lost out on getting my money back from Delta for that broken bag which Delta if you guys see this video please let me know because I spent a lot of money trying to replace that bag when I was in Paris and I ended up with one that was slightly smaller so actually we're going to blame that we're not going to blame me shopping i was fully prepared to bring things back in my bigger bag and then the airline broke it so yeah that's kind of what happened so we loaded up the buses which was an insane game of Tetris and then we headed over to the train station the train station had so much going on and with so many people in our group that were trying to travel together low key it was a little chaotic just trying to like make sure everybody was there what station are we going to making sure we don't lose people we're also carrying all of these bags and people who are doing their own travel whether it is like regularly or going on vacation are also there so it was like a teensy bit overwhelming [Music] this was actually my first time going on one of those highspeed trains in Europe and so I thought that was gonna be really exciting to be able to zip around i really really really really really wish the US had one of those i would love to be able to go from Atlanta to other cities across the country um just in a fraction of the time like I don't mind a road trip but if we had high-speed trains would be so much better like even if the Amtrak routes were just a little bit better I would totally do those instead of flying places all the time but I digress i want to both say sorry and thank you to the very nice Italian man who lifted up my 50 lb bag and put it in the overhead compartment so what I did not realize is that on these trains most of the bags almost all of the bags have to go overhead and you guys my bag was it was packed to the brim it was it was heavy it was probably the heaviest bag um out of the people that I was traveling with and it had to be lifted overhead it wouldn't slide in between the seats it wasn't going to work and this man came over i don't know if he knew what he was getting himself into but he just threw my bag on up there and I was like "You know what shout out to you." My classmates on the other hand when we were getting off of the train I was looking at the guys and I was like "Y'all got it." I I couldn't even lift it over my head like Orange Theory is teaching me some things i'm gaining some upper body strength but I don't I don't have that kind so they had a time um I won't describe what kind of time for their sake but they had a time trying to get my bag down and I had like all these plans like look out the window and explore and would you believe that I fell asleep the entire time like gone i woke up and I thought I was taking like a slight nap i'm not going to lie like I knew I was about to go to sleep i made myself a little bit comfortable um clearly I made myself too comfortable because I completely KO'ed i was gone um I think I woke up like 10 minutes before we actually pulled up into the train station at Florence and I was just like "Yeah there goes all of those beautiful sites that I was planning on seeing and being able to talk about." My friend's
husband became my biggest op on the trip because he had the best angle of me sleeping on that train and he got it you guys he literally caught me knocked out and everybody was talking about it and they were laughing and I was like you know what like I see you we're still cool it's all good there's no there's no beef it's all love but I was still like wow my biggest op my biggest op i can't believe it was you i never saw you after the train we got all settled at our hotel which was so so so nice like my bathroom was a little bit smaller than the last one um I was kind of cramped in that shower but my view my view was absolutely amazing [Music] so travel days can be really exhausting right like it was only about a 2hour train ride from Rome to Florence so it's not like it was that long and we didn't have to get up super early but sometimes it can just be really tiring like just the getting together the packing the going the commute it can just be a lot and so by the time we did that and checked into the hotel everybody was just tired like really didn't want to do a whole lot we had a cultural tour that we were signed up to do and so we did that we explored a little bit and then there was this optional gallery the Oizy Gallery that uh my friends and I had signed up to go to because it was included we were like you know what we're here we want to take advantage of everything also talked about how there were so many influential and really cool uh pieces of artwork in the Eizy Gallery including the Birth of Venus which is a painting that Beyonce took inspiration from for one of her outfits from the Renaissance tour so it was really cool to kind of like get that beehive like history tour from her uh and how art just kind of influences [Music] everything so while we were at the gallery my friends and I were trying to figure out what we wanted to do for dinner there were about six of us who wanted to go and you probably need a reservation for that it's a pretty large group to show up with to a restaurant based on some Tik Tok reviews my friend actually curated this really cool list of restaurants that we could go to in Florence and so I just kind of took the time going through them trying to figure out which ones took reservations online looking at menus we ended up being able to get a reservation for six people this was like 2 hours before they opened at this restaurant called Osteria Pastella and you guys that restaurant was so good you might have seen them on TikTok you might have seen some other YouTube videos about them i did like a whole deep dive video just kind of showing like everything that we got when we were at that restaurant overall experience was amazing it feels like a quaint restaurant like there was a whole line outside because it's not like they have all of the space to serve people but the experience is truly one of a kind like the fact that we were able to get a reservation for six people a couple of hours before and go to the restaurant and enjoy it was like it really like it felt like everything aligned for us to go from the flambe truffle pasta to the drinks to just everything i mean like I can't even I'm trying to think and I'm just like oh my god I just I want to go back you got to take me back it was it was so so so great we had the best dinner together i called it our family dinner um my friends and I really raved about that place and yeah you got to go you really got to go the black will cheers [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey hey hey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so now that we finally had the best food that we've had since we've been in Italy it's Thursday and it's time for another day of adventures really this entire day was all about a company visit so during the program I mentioned that this was for my MBA um although you know portions of it felt like a vacation there were parts of it that were it was still like a business trip for us so we did some company visits with businesses across all the different industries textiles ceramics fashion hospitality and a few others so this day we actually did a couple of company visits we started off by doing a hospitality one so the same hotel brand that we were staying at in Rome we actually had the opportunity to go to one of their hotels in Florence and just have a conversation with one of their executives about kind of what their company is doing what's the future of it ask some questions about that and then later we actually split up into two different groups and so it was by last name one group went to a ceramics place and then one group went to a fashion place the ceramics one was actually like much different than I was thinking like I was thinking it was probably going to be like ceramics like maybe like tiles things like that um it was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it was going to be like it was very very sciency for example they were working on this air filter that seemed like it was a really really cool product um just in kind of how they talked about it potentially being able to regenerate things like that um and then they were also working on some stuff that was in like nano medicine after all company visits my friends and I got a chance to relax and we had actually already signed up to do a pasta and tiramisu making class that night that we were pretty hype about like this was really the only excursion that a lot of my friends and I were doing that was like a group tour together we had such a great time doing this class there were actually so many of us that signed up for the slot that like half of us were at one restaurant and half of us were at another restaurant uh our restaurant we were kind of like in a basement it was pretty cool though so we made like a tagliotell pasta uh maybe like a fetachccini kind of depends on like the width but we made that kind of pasta and then we also made a ravioli with like the spinach ricotta filling we made tiramisu which is one of my personal favorites and then we sat we ate we drank and then we went back to the hotel and it was such a nice time like I think we we discovered some of the friends who are a little bit more skilled in the kitchen like some hidden talents and then some of the people who we were like you know what you buy the groceries and I'll make the food for you i personally love baking i love being in the kitchen and so being able to work with dough was really fun i had done a pasta making class before but I had never done one are actually able to use the pasta roller and so I was still in there learning something new even though it was like a new variation of something that I'd done before [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] heat hey hey hey [Music] [Music] la hey [Music] [Music] Okay so it is officially our last real day in Italy it's Friday saturday I'm traveling i didn't take anything that was a super long day but Friday is our last real day in Italy our last full day in Italy and we're going to make the most of it so we started off the day by doing another walking tour and you might be like how many tours is it possible to do like I feel like you have done so many walking tours but there's a lot to see like even if you just kind of walked around the city and explored there's a lot of like art galleries there's a lot of museums there's a lot of gardens there's things that you can go and see and explore and so we did these guided tours or like listening to our tour guides we're actually really learning about the city [Music] so I mentioned how Wednesday was just a really really long day well Friday was a really really long night we started off by going to our farewell dinner which was really nice we all ate we had a really good time we laughed we enjoyed time with our friends our classmates and then I was kind of crazy and decided I just wasn't going to go to sleep on Friday night so my flight left Saturday morning around like 6:00 a.m to go from Florence to Amsterdam and then from Amsterdam to Atlanta if my fight leaves at 6 our Uber was scheduled to come get us at 3:30 in the morning and I'm like I'm gonna be really upset if I go to sleep and I get into a good groove and then I have to wake up so that I can be downstairs at 3:30 in the morning so I'm not going to sleep which is a very bold decision for me because I'm normally in the bed between 10:00 and 11:00 every single night like I am very much I wake up early in the morning i do not stay up very late i'm not a night owl but this night I shocked myself and probably my friends to be completely honest so after the welcome dinner we hung out at the hotel we went to the hotel bar um we got ready to go out a little bit and then we went back to this place called the Jazz Club so I think I forgot to mention the Jazz Club before and I honestly just didn't have like any footage from being in there but the Jazz Club was essentially like a speak easy and what we were a little bit cautious and hesitant about in Rome where it was like filling out this information we just realized it was kind of standard practice and so we paid like €10 to join the jazz club and essentially we got like a membership card it's for the calendar year and we were able to kind of like go back it included a drink the first time and just kind of sit listen to the jazz um whatever kind of performances were happening and so we went there we spent like an hour maybe an hour and a half there had a good time listened to jazz at a certain point they started playing like some more upbeat music it was a great time and then we decided to head over to the next spot and so the next spot ended up being this place called Babylon and a couple of the people from the group decided to drop out when we went there this was like an actual like nightclub like being from Atlanta we are used to seeing like the bottle girls the hookah all of that stuff like pretty much anywhere but I think we were genuinely shocked to be in Italy and see like bottle girls in the club like we were just like I wasn't expecting this from I don't know why we weren't expecting it but we just it wasn't it caught us off guard for a little bit and then we quickly bounced back it got to the point where like time was literally getting away from us we didn't even realize that we had just been out for so long like it was probably like 2:45 in the morning right and we were like "Okay let's head back we want to make sure." cuz we had to walk like 20 minutes to get back to our hotel and as we're walking back to the hotel we saw pizza and so we went and we got pizza and we had like a nice time we got back to the hotel maybe at like 3:10 3:15 as I mentioned our Uber left at like 3:30 in hindsight I should have packed my bag before I went out so yeah next time if there is a next time that I do something like that again I don't know we'll see if I have the energy to do it but I will definitely be packing up my belongings before I actually leave um so it you know but it adds to the story it does like it was like wow I did this and I didn't forget anything like I brought everything back with me and I was under crunch time they were just less than normal circumstances but I did it and I'm proud of myself does it mean I would do it again absolutely not but I did it once and it's you know okay like look at me all right friends so that brings us to the airport where I'm heading from Florence to Amsterdam it is the end of my Italy trip i want to thank you guys so much for spending this time with me and seeing my adventures in Italy from Rome parts one and two to Florence this entire video i really hope that you enjoyed it and I'm excited to really just be more intentional about my vlogging in the future like I feel like these videos I was like halfway in halfway out with deciding that I wanted to vlog and also actually learning what it means to vlog so I got a lot of pictures of other things but like even these voiceovers or not really voiceovers but just kind of me talking about what happened i want to do better in the future about actually recording those in the moment so like I know how I felt i you know you just kind of see it there versus like me like a couple months later trying to remember what exactly happened what I was thinking what was going through my mind so I appreciate you being with me at the beginning of this vlogging journey uh I hope that you stay around i hope you enjoyed these so with that that is all for today's episode i cannot wait to see you again really really soon i can't tell you where I'm going just yet don't forget to like subscribe share all of that great stuff and I'll see you next time bye [Music]
2025-03-16 17:56
