Notte Bianca.

Notte Bianca 2013 Firenze.

Ponte Vecchio

Hearing nothing but awesome things about this night, I was pumped to experience it while being here!
On 30 april, every bigger piazza in Firenze had either live music, DJs, some type events going on, and/or a bunch of decorations.  A bunch of the awesome panini places are open form 6pm to 6am along with the gelaterias and other stores. Our goal was to make it to our favorite panini shop, Pino's by 6am.

Santa Croce

The streets and piazze were packed with people drinking, eating, dancing and celebrating this night, starting at 6pm.
We decided to get some bottles of wine and walk around.  Heading to the Ponte Vecchio, we sat on the bridge talking and drinking wine.  All of a sudden a smaller marching band comes walking down the street and stops right in front of where we were sitting.  They played for about fifteen minutes, in the middle of a huge crowd and everyone was watching and dancing to their awesome music. It was the best, and this was only the beginning of the night.

We walked to Piazza Santa Croce, which is right by our houses.  Meeting Austin and Jimmy there, and then Tara, we all hung out on the steps and ran into a ton of people we knew.
Eventually we headed to another big piazza, Santo Spirito, which is across the Arno.  Walking through the Ponte Vecchio we see a huge group of our friends and all walk to Santo Spirito together.
It was so fun to be walking and randomly run into people you wanted to meet up with and then all hanging at a piazza together, with a ton of other people and live music around.

Santo Spirito

We stayed at Santo Spirito for a while and then walked to the other side of the river by our houses.  There were games going on and bars with live music outside them, restaurants grilling and serving food outside, all throughout the city center. It was something that I've never experienced.
Trying to relate it to something, it was like the taste of Elmwood Park. Or even the taste of Chicago. But times like, 100.
It was all throughout the city, not secluded into one field or one area.  Every big piazza, every bridge, all through the streets and outside each restaurant.  So many people enjoying it all and up until all hours of the night/morning.

Stopping to meet some of Cathy's Italian friends in a different piazza and then into one of the pubs to watch the end the Blackhawks game (which was our time around 4am), we reach our goal and made it to Pino's by 5:30am.

Each of us enjoyed our favorite panini for breakfast, and walked home around 7am.
I could not believe we stayed up for that long, and it wasn't only us... Pretty much all of Florence was up for at least 12 hours.
This is probably one of the funnest nights I've had and all we did was walk around and be with all our friends.  It was the best.

Pino.