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Was a busy busy recent week and weekend.
Last week we were doing a lot of museum visits with Erik which was a nice change from sitting in the classroom, however much more tiring. We usually walk around with Erik for a couple of hours when going to museums and he speaks about pieces he finds worthy of knowing about. Sometimes American tourists will start to follow our group around for Erik is so knowledgeable on who did what, when, where, how, etc... I have not seen Erik stumble upon one piece in a museum yet that he didn't some at least something about.
Thursday night I went and picked up Jessie from the train station. I visited her in Switzerland two weeks ago and now it was her turn to visit me and experience Florence. After we dropped her bags off we ended up going to a fun bar that I like along with Brittni's family which included her mother Shelley, aunt Carla, sister Elena, friend Holly and two of my roommates , Kelley and Lyss. It was karaoke night and we just let loose and enjoyed the girls night. We sang, we danced, took pictures, all of it. At
one point a song came on, Greenday-Good Riddance, and I just started to laugh and almost cry, the song is a favorite of my best friend Ashley and I's and every summer when we worked together at camp we'd play that song on the last night of camp. Bitter sweet to hear that blaring in the bar.
Got to bed a bit late but got to sleep in on Friday. After making a little breakfast Friday morning I gave Jess the tour of Florence. We both weren't in the mood for museums and there was plenty to see outside so I took her to the Duomo, the Bronze Pig, Ponte Vecchio, Piazza Republica and her favorite place out of all it was the local sandwich shop by my school that we ate some delicious panini's at.
We did some shopping and then met up with Greg for a nice fun dinner at Dante's. We stopped by the Lions Fountain after dinner and ended up running into the guy that sold me my leather jacket at the market about a month ago. Was fun and came home late, stayed up talking until about 4 in the morning with Jess and Greg
.
At 7 on Saturday I dragged Jess out of bed to go to Cinque Terrrre! Brittni's family was going and Jess and I had really enjoyed hanging out with them the previous night AND I was DYING to go to Cinque so we decided to tag along. By 11:00 we were in Montarosso (1 of the 5 cities of Cinque Terre) and we were swimming and beachin' it. Incredible 80 degree weather, crystal blue water that wasn't very warm but the perfect temperature to jump into after getting hot from laying out. All of us girls floated around, laid in the sand, laid in the water... Like I've said before it's so nice seeing someone from back home, along with being around a family. With Brit's family and Jess being with me I can honestly say I enjoyed every moment. Shelley, Brit, Jessie and I waded out into the water and ended up just floating for a good 30 minutes just talking at one point. Nothing better then some good conversation and a beach.
After laying on the beach all day we found a small little restaurant and ordered some seafood. Cinque Terre is a seaport and is really
well known for it's seafood so I ordered a dish with a bunch of different seafood stuff... Really good calamari and excellent clams. Was very funny though when Brittni got her plate of fish for it still had the head, tail, everything. But overall it was a very scrumptious and fun meal. Note to Shelley-Again, thank you for dinnner!
At 9 Jessie and I decided we'd hop on a train home because we didn't bring anything besides our swim suites. We said ciao to Brittni's lovely family for they were staying the night and we hopped on a train back to La Spezia. When getting to La Spezia we bought our train tickets back to Florence and we only had one stop and it was in Pisa. We didn't have to wait long and by 11:30 p.m. we got to Pisa to catch our next train back to Florence. What jessie and I didn't realize was that we had been given bus tickets from Pisa back to Florence, not train tickets, because there were NO trains going back to Florence at midnight. A little bit confusing, but you can still use a bus ticket like a train ticket. We checked
the schedule and we'd missed the last bus meaning we'd have to catch the next train to Florence which was not until... 4 a.m. So Jessie and I were stuck in Pisa at midnight wearing nothing but shorts and bathing suites and completely sunburned. Jess had never seen the leaning tower of Pisa so we walked the 20 minute walk and took some very... upset photos (we were irritated with no train so I apologize if anyone is offended by the middle finger) and got yelled at by the police for getting too close to the tower. We walked back to the train station and by that time we still had 2 hours until our 4 a.m. train. It's NEVER safe to fall asleep at a train station, especially in Pisa, so Jess and I were doing everything we could to stay awake... singing, eating chocolate, telling jokes... eventually though some gypsies (yes, gypsies exist in Italy) parked it in a corner to get some sleep inside the station and a couple minutes later a drunk guy stumbled in and took all their stuff since they were sleeping. Then another drunk man came in and peed down his leg. Jessie
and I were starting to feel a little unsafe so we went and sat outside and still had to deal with drunk men peeing/smoking in open places. Finally the train came and we hopped on, passed out for a little bit and then woke up at 6 in Florence. We were too exhausted and stressed to try and walk home so we took a taxi to my apartment and were asleep by 6:30.
We slept in until about 11 and just laid around until Jessie had to leave for her train. At 3 I walked her to the station and we said our goodbyes, a little tough since I'm not sure when I'll see Jessie again. But it was a crazy fun filled weekend. Meeting Brittni's family, having Jess here, honestly one of the most memorable weekends yet for me.
Going to Germany in 3 days. I'll be updating this again soon and will post pictures later.
MISS AND LOVE YOU ALLLLLLLLLLL!
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