Finally in Florence. We won’t be getting the internet normally for another couple of days because it takes that long to get through all the conformation crap.
I used to be ok with the French and actually love French culture. Now I can completely understand people who say they hate the French. The only person that I met there that was halfway polite to me was the baggage services lady. Everyone else was very rude or was very short with me. The food (even the airport food!) was amazing, but that’s the only nice thing I have to say about the French for now. I was only in the airport, but I still think that gave me a good idea of how the natives are.
I was supposed to have a connecting flight in Paris to Florence at 12pm. I go to check in about half an hour before the flight leaves and they say the flight is full. So they say I’ll be on standby for the 4pm flight to Florence. Of course, that flight fills up. Then they said they’d see if someone doesn’t show up for the 645pm flight. Of course not. They overbooked all of their flights to Florence because there was other people I saw and heard go up to the customer service desk and complain that they couldn’t get on their flight to Florence either. Free advice for all of you: NEVER FLY AIR FRANCE. They tell me that all their flights to Florence are booked for the next couple days. So I ask where is the closest I can get to Florence that is open? Piza. There is a flight at 8pm but then I would have to take the train at night from Piza to Florence, which would not be a good idea. So I have to wait until tomorrow morning for the 10am flight to Piza. Then take the train from Piza to Florence. I ended up sleeping at the airport because after talking with the baggage service lady to see if my bags were good to go for the Piza flight and not somewhere else, she told me that there was a very good chance that all of the hotels in the vicinity were booked up. She gave me a little overnight/toiletry package and I slept on a bench.
But that crap is done and over with. On to good things.
Things here in Italy are quite different than in the US. A lot of things you wouldn’t think that would be different are very different. You push a button to flush the toilet. You turn on the gas before using the stove and then turn it off again when you are done. No screens in the windows. Dogs are welcome pretty much everywhere and you see a lot of people out with their dogs (I miss Chevy L). Haven’t needed to do laundry yet, but we don’t have a dryer as some of you know. I’m hoping it doesn’t rain or one of the many pigeons don’t poop on our clothes while they’re hanging out to dry. The stores are insanely small here as well. Maybe 10ft by 20-30ft, if that, unless it is a certain store like an Internet café or a supermarket. Even then, there are food stores and cafes that are smaller than that. It’s pretty damned clean here as well, other than the random dog poop and pee. For some reason people don’t clean up after their dogs here. However, there is no garbage on the streets. That could also be because there are the HUGE garbage bins every couple of blocks. Yellow is paper, all blue is cans and plastics, and white with a blue lid is organic. That’s been confusing me as well because there’s some garbage where I have no idea which category it should go in. Pretty much everyone here smokes as well. Cigarettes are very costly here (only 5-6 euros, but that equals about $10 per pack). It’s hard to think that they smoke so much here and yet are so fit. You don’t see a lot of overweight people here at all, mainly just the tourists. And the tourists are quite easy to point out.
The food here is great. IT IS REAL. No processed crap, everything is just so simple and delicious (shut up, Dani). The espresso is amazing. I’m excited to go get some gelato. Italians must eat a LOT of ice cream because there is a gelato shop close to every block here. Lucas ordered a pizza today for lunch and could only finish half of it, which was odd because most of the food here is often correctly portioned unlike in the US where you can order food and then take home enough for two extra meals. We haven’t been eating a lot due to the prices of everything (around double) so I’m pretty sure our stomachs have been shrinking. Which is a good thing in the long run because then we won’t need to eat as much to be full. I have a feeling we’re going to eat a lot of pasta and rice and beans, though. No problem with that because there’s so many different ways to cook those three things. Open air/farmers market is daily until about noon a couple blocks from our apartment as well so we can close to always get fresh fruits and veggies and meat (for Lucas, not me obviously). Italians also love Heineken beer as well because that beer is EVERYWHERE. I have yet to see American beer here.
I expect to be quite fit when I return as well. Our apartment is the top apartment in the building. So we have to walk up 4 flights of stairs every time we come home and walk down 4 flights every time we leave. It’s also stupidly expensive to rent a car or scooter, which I would never be able to drive here anyway (the drivers here are insane but oddly safe). So we’ve just been walking everywhere. The roads/blocks are a LOT smaller than in the US (think 4 blocks here probably equal 1 block in Chicago), but it’s still a lot of walking. We were out walking for about 4 hours today and we’re going to walk to the supermarket again pretty soon. And like I said earlier, the food here is all very fresh and doesn’t have all the chemical crap.
I’ve been slowly trying to catch up with the Italian. I know a lot of the basic Italian but I have a LOT to learn still. It’s easy to get by just speaking English because almost everyone here knows at least some English. There are a lot of tourists and students here as well as the native Italians.
I’m pretty exhausted right now, but that’s mostly probably because of all the activity I’ve been doing, both physically and mentally.
The apartment is very nice and cute. It’s pretty much completely furnished by IKEA. Even the silverware and plates and stuff are from IKEA. The beds kind of hard, but still generally comfortable.
We’re about 6-7 hours ahead of the Chicago area. It’s going to be difficult to time talking to people back in the US.
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