From the country to the city

10/17/2009

Today we are leaving Padua for Florence, where we will meet up with Claire for a weekend of F…U…N!!!!! We had a very relaxing morning. When we walked into the main house, Patricia had left a note for us explaining that everything was all set up to use and help ourselves. For the life of us Katherine and I could not figure out how to use a classic Italian espresso maker. Turns out we just didn’t leave it on the stove long enough. We had a delicious breakfast that included some homemade jam from her neighbors, eggs that were also from her neighbor’s chickens, and a persimmon from a tree in her backyard. I had never had a persimmon before and found it to be quite enjoyable. I love how everyone shares what they have and make with their neighbors. It makes for awesome and unique things to have in your kitchen and really creates a nice sense of community.

Patricia drove us to the train station, which worked out well because she had some errands in town that she wanted to run. Unfortunately we had to pay for a reservation on this train. Im getting really tired of paying for these stupid reservations. We don’t even need them because there are always empty seats on the trains. It is just a way for Italian trains to make money. When I am traveling on my own, I am going to make a point to travel on the trains that you don’t need reservations. A positive is that these trains had the most comfortable seats that we had come across so far.

On the train I actually heard an Italian say “Mama Mia”. Haha, I thought this was great. I love the way Italian sounds. I think it is a beautiful language. It has been by far the easiest language for us to understand on the trip. Having a bit of a Spanish background helps with this and also cognates. I just like the way the language sounds. So passionate.

When we got into the train station in Florence, we were planning on grabbing a bite to eat while we waited for Claire’s train to come in and then meeting her at her gate. Well as we walked to the end of the platform, Claire was standing there waiting for us. She had ended up catching an earlier train and had the wrong number for our phone so couldn’t get in touch with us. It was a wonderful surprise!

We headed off towards the hostel. This hostel that we are staying in Tyler recommended to us. Tyler is our friend from home, who is over here working as a club promoter. There were actually quite a few hostels in Florence that had great ratings on hostelworld, so we had a feeling that this one would be really nice… and it was, really nice. It has a flat screen TV in the room, a pool, Turkish bath, and all sorts of extras, in addition to having good free wifi. We got a private room, which is really nice so the three of us can just sprawl out and chill. When Katherine and I started this trip, we thought hostels would be around 10 euros a night. Patricia confirmed our feelings that we were sorely mistaken and hostels in Europe average 20-30 euros a night. On the positive side, that is still a whole lot cheaper than hotels. Its not the old days anymore where you could backpack around Europe on a 30 euro a day budget.

We decided to get a quick snack before heading out to wander around. Katherine and I split bruscetta and I started with a ¼ carafe of wine. I am taking full advantage of the fact that wine is cheaper than water over here and it is a miracle drink in the sense that it doesn’t give any hangovers. Then we started wandering around the streets and came across a vendors market. I gathered that it was a Saturday night deal. It was neat to see so many people selling their wares. Katherine was admiring a leather bomber jacket that happened to be at the stand of “the leather doctor”. She bargained with him and got a great price for the jacket. It was a great buy. He tried to outfit me with a leather jacket, but nothing was really making m e that excited. I needed to do some thinking before I make any major leather purchases in Florence and there will always be leather in Florence.

While we were wandering we came across a restaurant that Margaret had recommended that she knew of from her time studying abroad over here. We figured that since we stumbled upon it, we should eat there. This place was known for its pizza and steaks and was jammed packed when many other restaurants we passed were barely full. Putting all of this information together, we figured the place must be good. I ended up ordering a pizza that they had trademarked. It was called the Vesuvius and had proscuitto, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, arugula, and “prestigious” truffles on it. It was very good, but I thought it would have a bit more of a truffle flavor. They had a video playing on a giant flat screen that showed the chefs cooking all of their famous dishes. It was mouth watering. Unfortunately, the place was so busy that the service was pretty bad. We also ordered dessert that took forever to get and Claire and my tiramisu was frozen. It was kinda a bummer way to end the meal.

We went back to the hostel to change our clothes because we were going to meet up with Tyler for the night. Tyler also had a friend, Joe Napolitano, who is also from Virginia Beach, visiting him. We were going to meet them at the restaurant that we ate it, but since we just stumbled upon it originally, we got lost when we were trying to find it again. Tyler eventually found us and took us to an American bar that had a 3 drinks for ten euro special going on. We pregammed there and then Tyler took us to a typical Euro club, where we were VIP! We got to sit in the VIP lounge that looked over the dance floor and had all bottle service all night long. Since we were with Tyler, we didn’t have to pay for anything. It was quite the experience and there were some serious characters at this club. Im glad we got to see what clubbing in Europe was all about. Around 2:30, I hit a wall and realized that if I didn’t get into a bed soon, I would be in a bad way. So I caught an overpriced cab back to the hostel and hit the hay. I didn’t even hear Claire and Katherine come in.