Blog for July 19, 2010

You know when some people say that they are tired because they wake up and haven't stopped moving since? Well today I woke up moving already. Literally. Like, 80 miles per hour I think. I honestly don't know but I needed a good opening that had to do with the night train. Hah. Anyway, yeah...my nose started plugging up in the middle of the night, so sleeping was rather difficult, but was accomplished none the less. I was woken up to Greg saying to everyone that we have 45 minutes to get ready and get off the train. The thing was, we only have 10 minutes to get everything and everyone off the train. We got all the luggage next to the exit door and my friend and I were drafted to unload the train. As soon as it stopped I jumped out and we got everyones stuff off in 1 minute and 34 seconds. And luckily everyone got off before the train headed for Rome.

It was after all this commotion it hit me that we were in Italy. It was a pretty good feeling. The town seemed so much...nicer than Paris. Don't get me wrong, I love Paris, but our hotel (just like while we were in London) was out in some ghetto that was 45 minutes away from the city. But now that we're in italy, our hotel is actually inside a city!! I can actually walk to go get food rather than have to take the metro. Yay!!!

So after we got into the city from the train we got on the bus and headed straight for downtown Florence, Italy. Which was realllly cool. The first thing we did was go to a leather shop and learn about real Italian leather and how to tell what's real and what's not. We were taught several things about how it's treated and how it's dryed and stuff like that.

Afterwards, we took a walking tour of the city, and something surprised me about it. We were walking down a little street and then I realized...we were walking down a street! Not on a sidewalk next to a street, but in the street! What the heck?! I later learned that driving laws to Italians are a lot like the parsley that some restaurants put on your plate. The laws make no sense why they should be there, so the Italian people just ignore them. That's the same with a lot of rules. The cops are really just there to make sure Gucci isn't being counterfeited on the street rather than why the vendor was set up in the middle of the street anyway.

Something else in that city was really cool. The cathedral. I forget the official name, but it's just plain huge. But somehow it hides in the city so well. Seeing that was like...when you don't realize how tall something is until you're falling off of it. The feeling I got when looking at it almost made my stomach fall out of my butt. It was so awesome!

Ah anyway...after the walking tour, I went to lunch with some friends and had real pizza!! Like the real stuff!! It was literally the best pizza I had ever had. And it wasn't just a slice. Each person that got a pizza, got a pizza. But I swear I could have eaten three. Even the coke tasted royally good! I was in heaven! Then...we walked down the boulevard to a gelateria! Gelato! Real Italian gelato! It was amazing. By far the best food experience on the trip. On any trip, rather.

So after all that we actually went down to our hotel. I had a different roomate this time, but he was from another group and didn't have the best grasp of English. Luckily, my other friends on the trip had an extra bed in their penthouse of a hotel room, so I got to stay with them.

We had a really good dinner of pasta, turkey and cake. Then everyone pretty much either crashed or went out. Some people did both in the reverse order. But I stayed in our room most of the night and went out around midnight looking for gelato and got lost. Ha. It would have been better if I had a map that was in English. But I couldn't read the street signs because some streets simply didn't have any. But we made it back finally, and went to bed, I fell asleep before I could finish the blog from two days ago.

I'm still on the bus to Rome. So now I'm gonna put on my iPod and relax. My thumbs deserve it.

Ciao!
Matt Wofford