Florence: Nothing Can Stop Me But Divine Intervention.

We had our first set of free days this past week so Hillary, Nicole and I went to Florence. We left on Thursday afternoon and took the train to Florence. The trains. Oh man. They're a good way of transportation around here because it's so easy to get to the station and they're relatively cheap…but that's about the only good thing. It's so confusing to figure out the Departure/Arrival board. We spent a good 5 minutes just staring at it like we were studying a painting. Perplexed expressions, silence, hands on chins, everything. Then we heard a speaker come on saying that our train was delayed 20 minutes. Great. Another 20 minutes spent deciphering the board. Not really. We finally just matched our time on our ticket to the time we saw on the board – but the destinations listed are just the ending place. So ours said something totally different than Florence. But that was fun.

We got to our hotel at around 8 that night and then went to dinner. We stayed right next to the Duomo which is like the center of the town so right near where everything is happening. Dinner was great – then we met up with Nicole's friend from SMU who was studying in Florence. Hung out for a little while, then we crashed because we were so tired. Friday, Hillary and I went to visit a couple of the churches while Nicole stayed back and rested and caught up on the work she missed while in the hospital. We went to Santa Croce which was really awesome. It's the place where Galileo, Da Vinci, and Michaelangelo are buried so that was cool to see those. And they had this Statue of Liberty that was the "inspiration" for the statue of liberty we have now in NYC. Kinda cool. After that, we went to lunch then visited the Santa Maria Novella which is a huge church right by the train station. Not as cool as the other one, but some of the stuff Hill was wanting to see was closed for restorations so I guess that was the cool stuff.

Then I split off from them and went on my quest to do laundry. Seriously, a quest. I had brought a pile of dirty clothes thinking that I could find a Laundromat and there was a flyer in the hotel for one so I picked it up and attempted to follow it. This map SUCKED. I got extremely lost and ended up in (what I would consider) the ghetto. No one was near me except for a few sketchy people on bikes lingering around on the sidewalks. Just huge, graffitied residential buildings I'm guessing. But I had my backpack on, sunglasses on, and my eyes focused ahead like I knew what I was doing. (Not that the croakies or Rainbows made me stick out like a sore thumb or anything). Found the place, finally, after a good 30 minutes of the journey. Then when I got there, I couldn't figure out the soap-machine, and stared at it for a while (see train station story above). There was a couple doing laundry in there also, but they were reading so I didn't think to bother them. Turns out they were American. Great. So I borrowed their detergent and then just read my readings for class while I waited. Good times.

We had dinner that night then stumbled upon the Ponte Vecchio accidentally. This place is AMAZING. It's just a bridge over water, but at night it's all lit up and is really beautiful. Side note: Florence is very touristy. Lots of Americans. Everywhere. Don't even try to speak Italian…they just laugh at you. They all speak English. We saw lots of American students walking around the Ponte Vecchio – including one of Hillary's old high school friends who was actually staying in our same hotel. Small world! That night we went to this plaza and listened to this British guy play his guitar and sing American tunes – love those times.

Saturday morning, we just went to this HUGE market in the street with tons and tons of vendors. In the middle, there's a huge warehouse that's basically like a huge farmers' market with the downstairs for meats and the upstairs for fruits and vegetables and stuff. It was pretty intense. They sell every part of the animal, too. Nose, brain, hooves, everything. Sick. After the market, we packed it up and headed back to Orvieto. It was nice to be back in a familiar place and see everyone again.

Today we had two art history classes but those are more bearable because we only have the class when our professor is here and not off on the dig at Pompeii so it's a nice change of pace. The trip is starting to go by really quickly now too. We're already 2 weeks in and we have more free days starting Wednesday afternoon after a class trip to Pisa – not to mention our midterms this week! Yikes.

Still having a good time – Talk to everyone again soon.

Regan