Recovery Day

I don't know about everyone else in Florence, but my housemates and I are definitely ready for a day of rest. We have been running all over the place taking everything in these past 4 days. We have welcomed the fact that not much is open on Sunday so we are embracing the way of the locals. Like the saying goes, "When in Florence,".....well close enough. Our bar crawl was a lot of fun last night even though most of us went a little overboard. After hanging out at the house we met the bar crawl group at the Duomo at 10. The crawl consisted of 3 bars; The Red Garter, Xbacco, and Naimi (or something like that). We had only been to the latter so it was nice to see what other places Florence had to offer. They were all relatively close together and also near our apartment so it was pretty easy getting around. One of my housemates copped this monster glass beer mug from the first place with intentions of bringing it back to the house. He made it to the second bar with it before passing it off for someone else to look after. We have no idea where it is this morning but are determined to get it back.

This afternoon we had nothing to do so one of my housemates suggested just walking around to sight-see. Only in a place like Florence could you walk down the street with nothing to do and have an adventure like this. We start walking across the Arno since none of us have really explored this side of town at all. Our journey was completely on impulse and it worked out spectacularly. Another one of my housemates said something about climbing up to this lookout point type piazza. The place looked like it would give us a great view of Florence. We keep walking and following signs for Piazza de Michelangelo. After the river most of the hike there was straight uphill; we walked up a lot of stairs. It only took us 15/20 minutes to get there and was more than worth it. Once we got to the top, the view was just surreal. I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing. We spent a good amount of time just taking in the entire city. It was a perfect 360 degree panorama view. Anyway the first day of classes start tomorrow so I'll be staying in for the first night and hopefully get to bed early tonight so I can actually get some solid sleep. Tomorrow I also plan on getting myself out the door for my first run in awhile. Hopefully I'll be over my minor knee injury by now and ready to explore the running spots Florence doesn't have to offer.

Shout out to all my boys back home that just ran well at Boston. I saw we had 4 IC4A qualifiers so CONGRATS to those guys especially. You've been training hard guys, you earned it. But good job to everyone who ran well and PRed. Can't wait to get back and run with you guys again (as long as im not too out of shape by then). I need to start running tomorrow and find some good spots for runs. Its lookin pretty tough so far since the city is completely built on cobblestone and such. It is very rare to see grass in Florence, you really have to venture outside the center of the city.