Firenze

Day 5 of the Italian Adventure has been crazy, both good and bad.

Let me start by saying we are so sick and tired of pizza, and since it's relatively cheap, that's all we've been eating.  So last night in Monte, we ate ice cream, some not quite ripe yet bananas, and ritz crackers. So healthy, it actually made us both feel a little sickly. Better than pizza though.

So we wake up get our clothes off the terrace (we washed clothes in the sink and hung them to dry, needless to say, they still stink) and get ready for breakfast. Yay hot orange juice. 

So we go down, get our breakfast, and sit down to eat. Laura then walks out and asks in her funny little italian accent if we want "Caffe, cappuccino, orange juice?" Andrea tells her she wants nothing, but I go for the orange juice. Who cares if it is ten degrees hotter than the room, it's fresh squeezed orange juice.

By the way, it's so hot here and we do so much walking that no matter how much we drink we are still very thirsty. So we pretty much basically have a dry throat all the time. Not fun.

So she brings me out the oj, and Andrea opted for milk this time since it was the coldest drink there. I drink all the orange juice and eat my yummy breakfast. Corn flakes and  a nutella and banana sandwich and a fresh slice of cheese (I really like cheese). I'm EXTREMELY thirsty after this.

So since the milk I had recently poured was kind of lukewarm (who likes lukewarm milk) we decide to ask for ice.  The old italian lady knew what it was the night before, so we go for it. Andrea asks this new lady for some ice. She looks at us with this very confused look so we start rubbing our arms and saying cold and pointing to our cups as we make little cubes with our fingers. She smiles and says "si." We get excited FINALLY a coooooollddd drink.

She comes back with some drinks but no ice. So we wait paitiently, then we ask another lady for ice after a few minutes.  We say "freddo" which means cold in italian and point to our glasses of milk, she smiles politely and says "si freddo latte."  We quickly look up latte in our word roll dictionary... it means milk. Laura says "si freddo latte," and points to the milk she had just brought out. Epic fail.

Needless to say, we had to chug our lukewarm milk.

Some americans were at breakfast today, a lot of old couples.  One lady apparently thought italians were stupid because she talked to Laura really slow and loud "AMERICANO COFFEE." Then asks for a spoon (like laura understood that) so I just pointed to the table beside her and politely said, "They're right there." Dummy.

We finally get out of the hotel and make our way down hell hill to the bus station, the bus left at 8:15 am a 45 minute ride to Chiusi and our train didn't leave until 10:30. We had a lot of time on our hands.

On the way to Chiusi, we stopped at a bus stop and this Irish couple gets on without tickets. They cause a scene and the Italians laugh very hard at them. "It's closed! The office is closed I'll give you money." The bus driver simply shakes his head and says, "the bar." So little miss irish woman gets an attitude, "well you shoulda told us that before." (it's a lot funnier when me and andrea reenact it.) They even caused a scene in the train station, crazy irish people.

We finally get to our train and the wheels to my suitcase start breaking off causing it hard to pull, great. We get on the train and sleep, a lot and take pictures of sunflowers. Then for some reason the train breaks down like 3 stops away from Firenze. Great. Me and Andrea wrote a musical, I'm glad the people on the train couldn't understand us.

When we finally get to Firenze (an hour late) I spot a McDonalds and FLIP OUT. We run to our hotel and put our things away and leave straight for Mickey D's. Double bacon cheeseburger, large fry, and a large diet coke with ice. There was definitely a party going on in my mouth.

After a delicious lunch, we go out in search for our bikes my dad left for us.  We run into a guy selling suitcases (I desperately needed one) and he had a cute big suitcase for only 18 euro so we tell him we definitely be back.  We go in search for the bikes.. again. After going the long way around Firenze, we spot them... with flat tires. So we ask around for somewhere to fix that, a lady across the street (a lot more people speak english here) tells us where a bike shop is. We take them to the bike shop and the cutest tiny old men whose glasses were too big for his face took the bikes and told us to come back at 5.

We walk around a little, take some pictures, and head back to the bike shop.

We hand him 5 euro and he starts talking to us in Italian, good thing a co-worker translated. We told him we were from Mississippi and then he starts on about something else, pointing at the baby seat on my bike "masculine e femina" I tell him a girl and then he shows me pictures of his grandkids and talks about them for a while even though I had no idea what he was saying. Cute sweet old man, he was excited when we wanted to take a picture of him.

So we head out on the bikes and ride around Firenze, we had nothing better to do. My life almost ended 3 times. I was trying to take a turn and not get run over and almost smacked my face on a sign, no really I pretty much had to duck. Then we were riding down the street and Andrea shouts, "Here comes a bus, go faster." So I decide to be cool and ride up on the sidewalk because the streets are small and that was a big bus. I definitely hit the curb and almost went flying over the handle bars as I pressed the front brake. Everyone definitely knows I'm American now. One time we were sitting on the sidewalk trying to figure out something on the map and some lady yells at me in Italian something about blocking the sidewalk, as I try to move I almost run into a chain. I'm so graceful.

We then decide to give the bikes a rest for a little while and go shop in the market by our hotel. We get after it and some guy tries to sell me a big fake burberry purse and louis wallet for only 20 euro. A great deal. I simply say no, but I'll come back tomorrow. He shakes my hand, "promise?" Yeah, he was definitely giving me a good deal because he thought I was cute. I did however, buy some fake chanel earrings for 6 euro and a cute peacock bracelet for 4 euro. Then head back to the suitcase man, when we walk up he makes this funny little face and says "YOU COME BACK." He was a cute little asian man.  He said "since you come back, I give you great deal." A very cute, large rolling suitcase for 12 euro. Alright.

Now me and Andrea are sitting in the hotel writing blogs and I'm listening to mixtapes from Patrick. The internet costs 10 euro for 24 hours here. We just activated it so we can get on for another 24 hours. After that we might not have internet until Tuesday. So be patient. We will continue to blog!

I like Florence, a lot of people speak English.

Gabby