HERE.

Clarissa and I have finally arrived!

I am now sitting my bed in the hostel as clarissa peruses her new guidebooks and I eat apple slices. It’s a little past midnight here; we got to florence around 2:30 pm, slept until 8:30 pm, woke up, slept again until 10 pm, opened the window and realized it looked fun, got redressed, and went to walk around. Neither of us had eaten for almost 24 hours, but of course, given the time, pretty much everything was closed. We ended up going to the mcdonalds by the train station. It was filled with Italian dudes, ranging from ages 15 to 25. I got some apple slices, a strawberry shake, and some curly fries, and clarissa bought a chicken sandwich thing for a ridiculous 6.40 euros. Outrageous.

Here’s the deal.

When men cat call at women in America and France, it’s usually something entirely inappropriate and gross, sometime even physical.

This is why I like Italy very much so far: clarissa and I were hit on about five times by different groups of guys on the street, but NOT ONE was over the line or nasty, it was either “ciao bella” or “grazie” or we got an applause. Very polite and flattering. I believe it is safe to say we look forward to more. Of course, my pale nature stands out like a sore thumb, but apparently that attracts even more male attention. I really do I have to shake my past bad experiences with douche bags on the streets of paris; italy is a much friendlier and civil place it seems.

It has been a VERY long day. Our flight from Chicago arrived in Philadelphia at around 12:30. our plane from philly to rome was not until 6:10. we waited.

Finally the time came to board. The flight took forevvveeerrrrrr; I didn’t sleep a wink. Needless to say, I was so tired that I was on the verge of verbally abusing anyone I came across, but I kept it together. Then we took this janky looking “train” from the rome airport to the rome train station, then from there we waited about 2 hours and took a train to Florence. As mentioned above, we got here a little after two.

Our walk around town tonight was really nice. It’s probably about 40 degrees and a tad windy, but it was pleasant enough. We walked along the river arno a bit, got situated in regards to our location and the distances to different landmarks, and then went home. Florence really is quite tiny; I have very high hopes for this city.