L'Opera!

On my last Saturday in Florence, I decided to go to the opera!

The opera was in a small church (St. Marks/Church of England) in Florence... the acoustics were incredible! I saw the below opera on the placard, which is one that is well known and written by Puccini... 

The singers had voices that made the hair on my head stand up. 

It was an interesting cultural experience, and even though some of the girls went to Venice I don't regret staying behind. 

Before the opera a group of us met up with Tina & Sue, our instructors for aperitivo in the piazza by San Spirito. 

I should probably have mentioned earlier about aperitivo. 

You can go to most bars or restaurants in Italy around 5-7 pm, where you pay for a drink and they will have a spread of food buffet style where you can eat as much as you want. It's kind of like happy hour in US but the food is better. You could actually do aperitivo as your dinner if you had a mind to. Generally 

Italians eat dinner late, around 9pm, so you

can go to aperitivo until dinner time.

 I think the States should pick up on this idea!

After that we went to the Lion's Den, an Irish pub that is crawling with young college students from all over the world. They actually had an ASU shirt hanging from the ceiling! One of the girls had met an American guy from a tour she did over the weekend so we followed them to another bar for a drink. He also took us this underground club (Discoteca?) which was full of strobe lights, techno music, and smoke. 

Totally not my scene. 

I split out of there like a banana sundae with Bri, 

but had drank a bunch of caffeine and couldn't sleep. 

So I stayed up. Brittany and I pretty much watched the sun rise this morning. Today is gonna be a loooooooonnng one!