Sunday, January 9, 2011

7 American girls and one Italian lock...

Finally made it here to beautiful Florence, Italy!

The flight seemed to take forever, however the movie selection was fantastic I am pretty sure I watched 4 different movies with no sleep at all. Which led me to sleep an hour or so when we arrived here in Florence. After me and my roommates woke up we were all starving so we decided to try and find something to eat with a few of the other girls. We passed about 25 different gelato and pizza shops and settled at this pizza shop on one of the main streets with shops (names will come later, I have to learn them first). We sat at a table with 7 of us and the cutest old Italian man brought us a menu to order from. First off when you want a drink here you order a huge bottle of water for the whole table and then pour it into smaller glasses. If I tried to order a coke with dinner I think that little old Italian man would have killed me with his eyes. Now too ordering, thank god one girl in our group Tessa speaks Italian, or I am sure we would have ordered some god awful concoction trying to satisfy our hunger. We preceded to order 3 pizzas, two "Margherita" and one "vegetarian".  I would be lying if I didn't say this was the best pizza I have ever had. There was olive oil dripping off the sides as the cheese melted into your mouth. (I am trying to be descriptive so everyone can experience it with me!) And the crust was completely homemade which made it 20X better. I think I might have to eat that pizza at least once a week. Then of course we had to try gelato, (my other new obsession) the first place we ate it was okay however the place that Deborah took us to yesterday was absolutely amazing. After dinner we came back to the apartment for a while trying to decided what to do next. And now is where the tittle of this entry comes into play. Our apartment is considered "historical" we even had to sign something saying we knew it was really old, so the key to get in this place is called a "skeleton" key and looks like something from Cinderella. It took us an hour with 7 of our girls and an hour to get the lock open to our apartment. In the midst of this we locked one of the girls in the first time we got it open just in case we couldn't open it again. Needless to say 3 phone calls later on phones we don't know how to use and various words being used we finally mastered the lock. Then we ended up walking around the city trying to find a bar so we could all have our first "legal" drink. We ended up behind this amazing square called Piazza della Repubblica at this strand of about three bars, one being an Irish Pub. Me being a bit slow about what to order at a bar wanted some kind of wine and somehow ended up with champagne because I wanted "something sweet". However, the bartender did speak english so that was a relief. So we all got our drinks of choice and sat at a table right outside of the bar with the one guy we had with us. This led to a Italian/Mexican/African American man trying to sell us roses on the dime of the guy Stephon that was with us. He ended up paying 20 euro for 5 roses for each of the girls at the table. Lesson of this story: DO NOT smile at men/women/children trying to sell you something on the street, you will end up buying whatever they have to offer.

On to the second day:
We met Deborah at the Duomo, this gigantic old church in the city. There is nothing like it in the states I have ever seen. There is so much attention to every detail, like everything else in the city, you do not know where to look. It is the prettiest thing I have seen thus far. After meeting here and taking about 500 pictures of the place and the group we were with we were off to see more of the city. We went to lunch at this place right around the block from our apartment and I blindly ordered what I thought was spaghetti and meat sauce, which it was! It was again amazing! And mom guess what, we thought the bread you dipped in oil at the Macaroni Grill was good, wait until you come here it is a million times better. So after lunch is when we had the best gelato so far. Then we walked around the city some more. Did I mention we walked and walked and walked. I have never done this much walking in my entire life, I am pretty sure I am going to have the best toned legs in all of Italy. The city is like a free gym who knew! The we all kind of hung out around the apartment, did some laundry and the place down the street because it has a dryer and that is a hard thing to find here. Then we went to dinner at this sandwich shop which was not very good. It was like eating bread with warmed up salami on it. I will probably not eat there again. Also another note: DO NOT get the water bottle with the blue top, its fizzy water which tastes like bad coke. You drink the first sip expecting water and get bad flat coke in your mouth, not so good. So far I have tried about 3 different wines in hopes of finding one that I like, this is going to be a challenge they are all dark, red, dry flavors which I am not a fan of. I am determined to find one that I like though, it will take sometime and many sips of other peoples wine they order.

This is probably the most I have typed about anything since the last paper I had due. I just want you all to get every detail. This will probably not last the whole time but I will try my best.


Ciao everyone!

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