Meeting family from Italia!

Yesterday my cousin Laura came to Florence to visit! She's 26 and a student in Pisa, which is only an hour away. I haven't met her before and was really excited because we've been in contact through facebook. She's taken English before but doesn't know too much...and I'm still trying to work on remembering Italian! Needless to say we were actually able to communicate pretty well!

She showed me and two of my friends around Florence since there's still so much we haven't seen! This gave me a chance to take some cliche touristy pictures...yes! :) I can't wait to revisit the spots she showed us to really take time and explore. 

It was so exciting getting to meet and hang out with her! I was surprised at how much Italian I remembered and how easy it was to communicate. It was really great practice too!! I hope to visit her in Pisa soon (after I start Italian classes so I'm more fluent!) 

After she went back to Pisa, my roommates and I walked around until we found a place to eat dinner (so many restaurants here so we thought that would be an easy way to go and find something new!) We ended up enjoying a delicious dinner at Cibréo. The main dishes were 14 euro so we assumed they'd be pretty big portions and decided to split 3 things between 5 of us. First sign this wasn't a good idea...the owner walked passed the waiter taking our order and literally started laughing after he read it. Second sign: the first dish he brought out was chicken (can't remember exactly what it was but it was served with some of the best sauce I've ever tasted!) and it was literally the size of two chicken nuggets....so that split 5 ways was interesting hahah. Lesson learned! & we wonder how everyone knows we're American right away?! The waiter was kind enough to help us out though and brought us 2 other dishes as a "gift." It was flan with meat sauce and cheese (tastes much better than the way I describe this...I promise). Sooo nice of him!! 

I'd definitely go back to this place for a nice dinner. It was a great atmosphere, it felt very private because it was smaller and each dish was beautiful! Apparently, the place is very popular because there was a line out the door when we left. Successful dinner but I think we're just cooking at the apartment tonight...