Firenze in 24 hours

It's very doable if you're a fairly fast walker, but my feet were getting tired and I was pretty much sore all over. I took the train from Rome with Amy and stayed at a hostel called Plus Florence, which kindof reminded me of a senior citizen's home for frat and sorority kids, very clean though, and a fairly cheap bar. :)

First night, I got ahold of a friend from chapman who's studying in Florence, Nick, and told him to meet me at the hostel. I waited in the lobby for about an hour and contemplated how disgustingly dependent on my phone I was. I started talking to this Austrian girl who started divulging her misunderstanding of Men, she asked me if I wanted to get a beer, but alas, I was still waiting for Nick. Eventually I left a note for him at the front desk, pathetic, and went down to the bar. I started talking to this girl from Missouri who apparently was staying at the hostel for an entire semester with a group studying. She invited me to go out to a pub with them.

Some of them were pretty nice, but by the time we walked to the Irish pub (the Fiddler's Elbow) I realized we'd be disregarded as obnoxious Americans. I got a Guiness and started talking to people about lucidity... typical. I noticed this table of three Italian guys kept looking over at us, not entirely with disdain. When I went to the washroom they invited me over to their table. This is where I truly discovered the disdain of language barrier. By this point I was wondering where Amy was and really just wanted to leave, the bar was lame and mostly had older people, not to mention overpriced beer.

Amy woke me up the next morning, we had breakfast with this Australian girl who refused to wear shoes in the building. Right on. We asked if the Italians were rude to her as well because she didn't speak Italian, she said that on the contrary they usual gave her discounts for being Australian. I decided to speak in an English or irish accent from this point on in this country.

I went out and saw the David statue with Amy and snuck two pictures despite the guards watch. I didn't realize it was so huge, breathtaking really. The musical instument museum was pretty cool as well, I think the Smithsonian collection is a lot more impressive, but these were all Firenze instruments. I walked around for the rest of the day enjoying the city, Amy and I decided we needed to get drunk together this evening to celebrate the end of our travels together. I still hadn't gotten ahold of Katie though (who didn't have a cell phone either) and was planning on staying in her dorm for the rest of my trip, starting with tomorrow, her birthday.

I didn't get to see the Uffitzi, but I was already starting to trip on the amount of money I'd spent. All in all it was a great day in Florence, but I most certainly would not want to stay there for a semester.