Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Florence


We arrived in Florence around 9:30 on Wednesday night, and the adventure began.  We were no longer with a native Italian to help us get around and we just prayed that we would run into someone who spoke English to help us out.  The hostel that I had booked gave pretty clear directions to their location and we just needed to figure out how to buy a bus ticket.  We asked a food vendor and he told us we could buy it right on the bus, it was more expensive that way but easiest.  We found our bus pretty easily and when we got on it there were a few girls talking in English so we talked to them for a bit.  Two of them were from Erie, Pennsylvania and they were with a friend of theirs from Germany.  They were really nice and it was comforting to talk to other Americans in a country where we didn’t know the language.  We almost missed our stop for the “hostel” but luckily we checked where we were right at our stop.  I say “hostel” because it was a campground.  I found it on hostel world and it’s located in an olive grove so they can’t have hard roofs (I don’t know why…) so there are actual camp sites for those who come prepared, or, in our case, there are tents set up with wooden floors and actual beds inside.  It was really cool!  Totally worth it for 18 Euros a night.  We dropped off our stuff and walked around the city for a while, it was nice.
Thursday we slept until we wanted to and took our time getting ready.  We started the day off by going to the Piazzale Michelangelo, it was a 3 minute walk from where we were staying and has a magnificent view of the city.  We took some pictures, soaked up the view and then set off to figure out how to get to the actually city.   It wasn’t far and we were walking for a while so finally this woman helped redirect us.  It only helped so much and we ended up back near the piazzale.  Anna saw some guys who looked a little confused as well and their t-shirts were in English so we asked them if they knew.  They didn’t, they were in the same predicament as us so the five of us decided to look for the way to the city together.  The three of them were in their upper 20s, all really nice.  And one of them is a CPA at Deloitte!  I asked them what they do and when he said that I was so excited!  I told him that’s what I want to be and about my internship at PwC this coming winter.  We talked about accounting and how he likes it and stuff for the rest of the walk into town; it was really cool and got me excited for my future job.
After probably 20 minutes of walking we made it to the city and parted ways with them.  Then Anna and I just walked around, saw some churches, the bridge that is well known there, looked around at countless markets, and ate some pizza for lunch!  We walked some more but it was SO hot (mid 90s and up all day) and we were just drained.  We had some gelato and sat and then decided to head back to our campsite until dinner.  We hung out at this bar area with a bunch of picnic tables and talked to this man from Amsterdam and then a couple that was traveling together.  The guy had just graduated from UNC and is looking into law school at Syracuse and his girlfriend is from Scotland.  It was a lot of fun talking to them all and it was nice to relax until the sun went down.  I fell asleep in our tent a little after that and slept through dinner, but then I woke up and Anna and I decided to follow the music we could hear from our tent.  We ended up at a bar/lounge/something that was a two minute walk from the campground.  It was cool to be out and around Italians but also lame because we couldn’t speak Italian so if we wanted to talk to anyone they had to know English…or French but that was rare.  And there was a good sized dance floor and it was packed, but all but three people were just standing on the dance floor.  Not even exaggerating.  We stayed there for about 20 minutes and then just went back to the campground.  At least we tried!
pictures to come later...

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