Last week in Florence!

Saturday, June 25th 
Logan Vaughan and Paige Allen are here!! I'm so happy to see some other familiar faces! We are currently on the train bound for Roma so I'll take this time to fill you in on my last few days as a Florentine. I believe I left off on Tuesday. In class we had our fourth test, the questions were so specific and persnickety that everyone did horribly resulting in our teacher throwing out the grade. In the afternoon, I came to the realization that I had spent little to no time shopping so I sucked it up and went to the san Lorenzo market. In the late afternoon summertime heat this is no easy feat. There are literally dozens upon dozens of stalls all jammed packed with merchandise. The italian vendors try to entice you when you walk by. I got called my favorite compliment thus far, "Shakira Baby" by a man I ignored. That was a good laugh. I was pretty disappointed in my quest but would continue to look for leather goods later on. Wednesday in class we visited the New Sacristy in San Lorenzo designed and built my Michelangelo. This place is literally a minute from my apartment but I had no idea how famous or cool the building was. That afternoon I had a ticket reservation to the Academia to see the David; it was a day to admire the works of our pal Michelangelo! My time was at 3:45 but there was only one slot when I was booking online so I went alone. The academia is kinda far from the other buildings in the historic district, but the groups of tourists and long line helped me find the place. I waltzed in right on time and bypassed the wait. I got an audio tour for 5 euro and walked around the museum for about 2 hours. The coolest thing by far was the David - he was massive! Other points of interest were the museum of Renaissance instruments, 1300s paintings by Giotto and his contemporaries, and an extensive collection of plaster busts by Lorenzo Bartolini. ThE museum was neat and not too crowded although the stench of sweaty tourists was pretty nauseating. When my feet couldn't last any longer, I went home to get ready for dinner. Ellen's twin brother Matthew Hughes, sister Rachel, and friend Eric Lodge were visiting so Ellen made reservations at this nice restaurant at the top of Piazzale Michelangelo. We had a really lovely 
dinner siting out on the terrace watching the sun set over the city. It was the prettiest sunset we had seen, reminiscent of something from the Lion King. After dinner we went to the club Flo which is on the same hill, but only stayed for a half hour because the dance floor was dominated by 50 year olds who were having more fun than us! Plus I had my final the next morning so we called it a night. Thursday morning Riley and I woke up early, determined to climb up the steps to the top of the Duomo. You may ask what took so long for us to get around to this? It wasn't laziness. I'm glad we procrastinated because we were able to look out and actually know the buildings we could see and identify streets and landmarks. The climb was quick but tough. Our hearts were racing as we hiked up 465 stairs. The tunnels and stairwells got very very tight and I almost got claustrophobic, but persevered. I don't think some fat Americans could have done it! At one point we were walking in between the two domes and then climbing up the side of one. It was insane. After that we got pizza close to school and mentally prepared for our finals. Mine was at 1:30 because my teacher, Margherita, had to speak at a deans' conference. The test was easy and mainly slide IDs but I know I messed up on some dates. After we said goodbye and were done with school! I celebrated by selling my textbook back and buying a really cute pair of leather sandals. I ran into Holliday and Melissa on the street and we went and got Grom (the best!) gelato and did some shopping. We had huge success at some random leather shops and all bought jackets! Mine was from Bargello Leather Factory. It's a simple chocolate brown and I love it! Eric and Matthew were in the pub Lion's Fountain watching Wimbledon nearby near Santa Croce, so Melissa and I met up with them for a beer. I got Frost which I'm told was a local, or at least Italian beer, it was good. We had good convo and the boys wrote down a page long list of places to go in Barcelona - hopefully you'll hear about them later on in my tales! That night for dinner we ate well again. We had reservations at the very elitist La Giostra. It was worth all the snobbery though, I had the best ravioli yet! After that we went, for the last night, to our joint Bigallos to bid farewell to Giorgio, the overly friendly owner who never let our drinks run low. After that we met Logan and Paige at a new place called Slowly for a drink. I was so so so glad to see a fellow AHer and best friend. Since then we've hardly been out of each other's sights. On Friday I met up with them for lunch near Palazzo Vecchio. We got pizza, cokes, and caprese salad then I showed them around the city. We got a caricature drawn of ourselves that hardly made any resemblance. We got Nutella gelato at a place near the ponte vecchio and enjoyed the afternoon. We checked into their hotel, Hotel Heltevia and Bristol, in the late afternoon. Since the reservation was only for two people, I stayed outside on the street. Fortunately Friday was the Florentine holiday for their patron saint John the baptist so there was a parade going on right through piazza strozzi 50 meters from the hotel. I watched as literally hundreds of male Florentines dressed in traditional renaissance garb marched down the street. They were heading to the Santa Croce neighborhood where the Calico Storico was to take place. This is sort of like a rugby tournament but 20 times more brutal. I didn't see it but had read about how men's ears get bitten off and how it's returned from a recent suspension. The four teams are composed of men from the 4 neighborhoods of Florence. I saw them as they walked by. They looked like convicts with shaven heads, huge muscles, and plentiful tatoos. Also in the parade were old men (ex players is my guess), a bull, preists, and flag throwers. The most interesting thing to me was that none of them were smiling! This was not your average Disney production, no crowd interaction, all serious tradition. After the parade ended  and the girls were checked in, we went for a cappuccino and glass of wine to toast to Sam Dib - his celebration of life (birthday and funeral which was an hour from starting back in SA). We had a late dinner on the other side of the Arno at an outdoor restaurant with good burgers. The whole city came out alongside the river to watch the firework show which started at 10. It was awesome and picturesque. I'd never seen Florence so hoppin' in the night time! After dinner we went to bed in anticipation of our day trip to Roma on Saturday. So here I am today! Heady back to rome where I was almost a month ago! I've got big plans for our 7 hours there and will act as tour guide! Ciao roma; more adventures to come!

Saturday, June 29th
Torrence Leaves Florence 
Being a nomad means Internet is super scare and hard to obtain. I'm siting in a 
Starbucks in London across from the British museum trying desperately to update 
my blog. But what do ya know, wifi isn't free here either. It's my last day in 
London and in about three hours I will head to Heathrow for my flight to 
Barcelona, so I must catch you up on what I've done in the meantime! Whoever 
said Rome couldn't be conquered in a day was mistaken - at least from a 
tourist's perspective! I dragged Logan and Paige through the city visiting all 
the main sites with time to spare! We bought a map in the train station and I 
picked the places and the route we'd walk on foot. We started at the Colosseum, 
then proceeded to the Roman Forum, victory monument in piazza venezia, Trevi 
fountain [insert gelato break here], pantheon, piazza navona, L'Orso 80 for 
lunch, castle San't Angelo, the Vatican, and finally the Spanish steps! Along 
the way we made a few pit stops - stopping along the Tiber to rest our feet, 
into Hermes to admire the stuff and enjoy the air conditioner, and to browse in 
souvenir shops. We finished our tour with an hour to spare so when we got to the 
train station, we thought we would hop on an earlier train. Here begins the only 
flaw I've had so far in my travels. The train we boarded was nasty. This should 
have been our first warning flag that something wasn't right. The air 
conditioner wasn't working well, we didn't have assigned seats, and the 
bathrooms stank a lot. About an hour and a half into the ride, when we should 
have been arriving in Florence, Logan realized that the reason we were running 
behind was because we were stopping at a lot of small stations. The light bulb 
came on and we discovered that in our hurry to get home, we got on the regional 
train instead of the fast train. Haste makes waste! So instead of a quick under 
2 hour ride, we had a 4 hour journey ahead. This would put us back in Florence 
at 11 and we would miss dinner at the hotel. Luckily, we stopped at a station 
for 20 min and we got some Nutella and snacks to tide us over. When we 
eventually got back to the hotel after hours of bonding and chatting, we had a 
glass of wine at the outside patio before they closed. 
Last day in Firenze! On Sunday, I woke up, showered, and got cappuccino and 
croissants at the passteria Gilli right by the hotel and brought them back to 
Logan and Paige. We all packed then went out to explore the city for one last 
time. We crossed the ponte vecchio, hiked to piazza Michelangelo, then went down 
to the pitti palace to get to Gusta pizza. On the way we saw a leather store 
with cutw bracelets, we stopped to get one to take to Scarlette Barrow on London 
foe her birthday but all found leather pursues we loved and bought! Mine is a 
cognac colored messenger bag with lots of pockets and zippers, great for 
traveling! We got pizza and paninis to go then headed back to the hotel so that 
I could get ready and catch a cab to the airport. I was flying brussles airlines 
which sounded sketchy so I was nervous, but it turned out to be a super small 
buy very nice airline! I'd fly it again! My big checked bag was a little kg's 
over, but she let it slide, I sat in economy plus which gave me a newspaper to 
read and yummy meal. I stopped in brussles, Belgium for a layover, but couldn't 
point it out to you on a map or tell you the language that they speak there! My 
flight into London was beautiful. It was around 9 but the summer sun was still 
setting so it was dusk when we touched down and I saw all the main sites from 
the air! I took a hefty taxi ride to logan's apartment, hauled my bags up 
another step of 3 stories of stairs, and got to my new home in London around 
11:30pm. I went to sleep and woke up early to start my London adventures!