Three Angels in Space

NOTE: This blog is really long. The first stuff is more of a detailed account of what I've been doing. The last stuff is more like little anecdotes. You might want to pick and choose what you read.

I made it through another whirlwind weekend, this time in Florence. But first, let me recap the week leading up to my trip: I went to class, ate at a Mexican restaurant, went to a wine tasting at school (oh, JCU), and saw a cool light installation at Circus Maximus (we hurriedly took one of the last trains out to Circus Maxiumus to see this light display, and as soon as we got there, the lights went off. After some pouting and near-crying, the lights turned back on. There is still no explanation for this event). Now for Florence.
I left on Friday morning by train. The station in Rome was really cool and was like an airport or a mall. Once in Florence, we went to our hostel, Emerald Fields. When we checked in, we got upgraded to Emerald Palace across the street. A palace indeed! It exceeded all of my expectations, though never having been in a hostel, my expectations were quite low (I pictured dungeons and bathrooms without doors). The hostel was very clean and spacious. I was traveling with two other girls, Meaghan and Caitlin, and we were in a room for four people. We found our roomie making bruchetta in the hostel's kitchen. He was a Canadian video game maker traveling through Europe alone. I was sure he would kidnap us and take us to murder hostel, but he was just socially awkward.
The first time in our Florentine journey was the Uffici Gallery. After finding out which of the 50 lines to get in and forking over 13 euro (this would end up being a trend in Florence), we had the opportunity to gaze upon great Renaissance artwork by Botticelli, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. It was all very stunning and really cool to see paintings I had before only seen in textbooks, but by the end, I was pretty tired of looking at fat cherubs and weird babies with old man faces (the German artwork was especially keen on painting not only weird babies, but ugly people in general). The Uffici was really great, but ginormous and tiring. Considering this, we headed to the Academia to look at more art. Yay.
The Academia was actually really cool and I liked it even better than the Uffici (perhaps because it was smaller). The David was incredible to see and they had some of Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures on display, which gave some insight on how he actually carved it. Unfortunately, a rule of the museum was that you could not take pictures and there was one museum worker in particular who was very intent on letting no one take a picture of David. At the first sight of an eager tourist pulling a camera out of their fanny pack, she would rush over, chattering in Italian and wagging her finger until the bewildered tourist tucked the camera away and took some mental photos instead. She was more concerned on guarding the front of the statue than the back, therefore I have some pictures of David's butt and some blurry ones of his front, taken as I was running away from the camera nazi.
The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping and walking around and getting dinner. Florence is more what I expected Italy to look like than Rome. It is smaller, has tiny parks with patches of grass, all the roofs are terracotta, and the dogs are fluffier. Its a beautiful city, but it is more touristy than Rome since the same amount of tourists that visit Rome visit Florence, but Florence is smaller. Everything is very expensive and the streets are packed with vendors selling everything from leather coats to boxers. I was able to spot the Italians in the city pretty easily, as they were the ones catcalling (we got an "Oh my God! Three angels!" on our way to a bar) and wearing t-shirts with confusing English phrases (these included "Set, Ready, Be!", "I'm going to eat you so much!", and "I like too much to be...Snob").
That night, we decided to go to Space Bar, an outer space themed bar. The name alone made it sound promising, and the fact that we got handed a flyer for it on the street made it seem like fate that we should go (plus, it sounded better than the flyers we got for the "Free Crazy Party"). While getting ready at the hostel, our creepy Canadian roomie asked us where we were going, then invited himself along. Fortunately, when it came time to leave, he said "Oh, sorry guys, but I think I'm going to just stay in tonight." We put on our best fake-disappointment-to-hide-our-contentment faces and left.
Space bar was all I had hoped it would be and more. There was a "VIP room", a discotheque, an aquarium, karaoke, and a giant UFO above the dance floor. However, we didn't really explore much of the club, since the bartender took an instant liking to us and we found him too interesting to leave. His name was Fabio. 'Nough said. He was one of the strangest and most entertaining people I have ever met. He spoke English, but insisted on writing us notes on napkins with little drawings or symbols in place of words. He even wrote us a poem: "I like coffee/You like tea/I like you/You like me." Fabio is a literary genius. He requested that we sing "Love me Tender" by Elvis Presley on the club's karaoke, but since we didn't know the words, we sang the next best thing--My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas. Once the bar started closing, Fabio's friends showed up. They were kind of old and poor Caitlin got stuck talking to Massimo, who looking like a skinnier and older version of Gunther from Friends. I struck up a conversation with Fillipo, who didn't speak much English, so I had a whole conversation in Italian for about a half hour. It was a very cool and accomplished feeling. I guess this whole living in Italy thing is improving my Italian skills. At around 4:00, we noticed that we were the only ones still at Space who did not work there, as the bar closed at 3. After promising to come back the next night (we didn't) and being offered some motorino rides back to our hostel (we refused) we walked home and promptly fell into our beds.
After three hours of sleep, we woke up for a bus tour through Tuscany. As soon as I woke up, it became apparent that I would not be going back to Space Bar that night, let alone staying out past 9. Caitlin and I dragged ourselves to the bus stop, our groggy sluggishness leaving no time for coffee. We got on the packed bus full of middle aged male and female Australians, Brits, Americans, and Nick Nolte (well, he looked like him plus an afro with dreadlocks in the back, creating an octopus-like hairstyle). As we were just settling in to fall asleep for the 2 hour bus ride to Sienna, an Italian man in the front of the bus got on a microphone and started cracking corny jokes and telling useless facts about the tour destinations. This was not a good start to my day, as I do not like being talked at by a squaty Italian man while I am uber exhausted. To top it off, the Australian women sitting behind me decided to punctuate each of the tour guides sentences with a loud "tsk tsk" and a repeat of keywords. So the soundtrack of my morning bus ride sounded something like this: Tour Guide, "In Sienna, a-everybody is-a very rich, but they-a don't like to show it, so it a looks-a very poor, but don't-a be fooled by the man from Sienna!" Australian women "TSK TSK TSK Oh dear me, did you hear that? They're rich! In Sienna, they're rich. But they look poor. In Sienna. Rich. TSK" I was about to jump out that bus and roll down a Tuscan hill. Fortunately, once we reached our destination, things got much, much better. We split off from the group and got coffee.
Sienna is gorgeous. I'm going to live there one day and open a hostel. It has all the charms of Florence without all the tourism. I was actually able to find a restaurant with an all-Italian menu! (most in Rome and Florence have English descriptions on the menus). Sienna seems to have popped out of the pages of a Tuscan travel journal. While walking around, we came across a wedding where all the women were wearing hats and all the men in nice suits. Later, walking by that same spot, we saw a man carrying a large owl. I'm assuming the two events had nothing to do with one another. In Sienna, we stopped in the cathedral, which had beautiful green and white marble striped pillars all around it and within it. That was the most beautiful cathedral I have seen.
The next stop on the tour was a farm house in Tuscany where we had lunch. Think of your stereotypical image of Tuscany, and that's where this farmhouse was. All around, you could see vineyards and hills and little houses. The food was excellent and Caitlin and I sat in between a family from New Zealand and a couple from California (everyone from America in Italy is assumed to be from California). They were nice to talk to, but then we saw the family from New Zealand walking around Florence the next day wearing the exact same clothes. It was weird.
Next was San Gimignano. Caitlin and I were a little tired of beautiful landscapes and cathedrals, so we went to the Museum of Torture. This was an excellent choice and possibly more interesting than the likes of the Vatican and Uffici. The mode of torture I found most interesting was one where the victim's feet were covered in salt water and a 3-day water-deprived goat licked the skin off the feet. San Gimignano was a little too touristy for a small town and had a lot of kitchen stores, but it was pretty and had good gelato.
The last stop on the bus tour was Pisa. Pisa sucked. This is probably due to the fact that I was very tired by then and Pisa has absolutely nothing except the leaning tower and tons of fake purse stands. Plus, it is incredibly difficult to take that picture where, because of a trick with perspective, it looks like you're holding up the tower. Caitlin and I tried this a million times and now we have a ton of pictures of us standing next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa holding our arms straight out in front of us.
Sunday was spent doing some last minute sightseeing in Florence. We went to the Church of Santa Croce, where Michaelangelo, Machiavelli, and some other important Italians are buried. It was actually kind of a dull cathedral, but nothing can really compare to Sienna's cathedral. We walked up the bell tower of the Duomo. There are 400+ steps and they are all incredibly narrow, dark, and windy. To make things worse, there were people going both up and down, so occasionally, we would have to stop walking, pin ourselves against the wall, and wait for the people going the opposite direction to pass. One little girl who was walking down while I was walking up was huffing and puffing harder than anyone and used my butt as a railing as she passed by. Once we got to the top, all the walking and pausing and groping was worth it because the view was breathtaking.
We walked around Florence for the rest of the day, stopping at some parks and the Ponte Vecchio. Along our walk, we heard a high pitched squeaking/smacking sound that we thought was a bird, but we soon found the source of the sound was a couple making out across the street. They're kissing had the craziest sound projection I have ever heard. Instead of being offended or grossed out, I was just amazed. If I haven't mentioned it before, the PDA in Italy is the most extreme I have ever seen. People make out anywhere and everywhere (especially public transportation). However, this is not the same kind of public making out there is in America. Instead of just going at it in a way that is at least comical for onlookers, Italians kiss incredibly sensually and slowly, so as to make everyone around them very uncomfortable. You might think the goal is to make everyone so uncomfortable so that they go away, but these couples don't even seem to realize they are in public, since inappropriate groping often accompanies these slurpy makeout sessions.
Our last hoorah in Florence occurred on the way to the metro. We walked past a big tree stump that was smoking. Upon closer look, we realized the stump was on fire because someone had put their cigarette out on it (genius!). After we stared at it for a while, an Italian lady on a bicycle stopped by to join the staring, muttered some Italian at us, then left after Meaghan poured her water bottle on the flames. We saved Florence from burning down. Huzzah!
After this long tiring trip, it was nice to get back to the apartment. I guess there's no place like Rome...

Ok, enough of the nitty gritty details about my trip. Here are the fun stories.
I should preface the following by saying that I am a total disaster. Unlike a normal person, I find myself in strange and awkward situations daily that most people would instinctively avoid. For example....
I was buying shoes in a store in Rome, so of course, I had to try the shoes on. The store was about as big as a dorm room, lined with boxes of shoes, and had one chair. The chair was being used, so instead of being a normal person and a) waiting for the chair to be vacant or b) sitting on the ground and trying them on, I tried on the shoes while standing. So of course, I fell. In the process of falling, I grabbed onto Kristina, who gave me a perplexed look and let me continue to fall on a boots and boxes. Awesome. I fell in a Roman shoe store.
Next disaster moment occurred in a clothing store. After trying on the dress, the saleswoman insisted that I come out into the store to look in the big mirror. She instantly starting adjusting the dress, which was fine, until she reached under the skirt to lift it up and adjust the slip. I just had to let her do her thing, mostly because of the language barrier, and I didn't even know what to say to something like that in English.
During one of the stops on the Tuscan bus tour, I went into a bathroom, only to be called out by a weird old man, who made me pay 50 cents for toilet paper. I got in the stall to find nothing but a whole in the ground. Egad! I wanted out of there as quickly as possible, but when I turned the handle on the door to leave, nothing happened. I turned the lock every which way, jiggled the handle, but no freedom. I really started to panic because I was stuck in this walled in hole for a good five minutes before the creepy old guy who took my money unlocked the door and yelled at me in Italian. That was the worst experience of my life.
In Pisa, Caitlin and I were buying some fake bags and the guy selling them asked if we were from Sydney. A while ago, we had decided that we were going to tell people we were from Canada for a while, to see if we would get treated differently. We did. We got spoken to in French. We did not think through this plan. We told the salesman that we didn't speak French. He seemed confused and said that all Canadians speak French. Nope, not us. We're special Canadians and we learned Spanish in school instead. So he spoke to us in Spanish. After we gave him more blank stares, he scolded us and said that he speaks 7 languages and that anyone who speaks only 1 is a failure in life. Yet he is selling purses in Pisa.
When we were finally leaving Space Bar in Florence, we said goodbye to Massimo and Fillipo with the European kiss kiss on both cheeks. I had not had the opportunity to do this yet, so I was thrilled to get the chance to take a step further into my Italian immersion. But of course I messed it up. Massimo and I both went the same way, so we ended up awkwardly in each other's faces. This was especially bad since Massimo looked to be about the same age as Methuselah.

BASTA!