What Time is it Where You Are?

3.58pm, Florence, Italy.

Right now I am sitting at a little bar slash restaurant in Florence, Italy. The pizza here is very good! But first, how I got here.

We left andrew with a hug as we walked to the train station to catch our Eurail sleeper to Venice. We left in plenty of time so as to not be late for a crucial part of our trip: the train. Our train was to leave at 8.38 as confirmed by the website. We made reservations that morning and the woman said ok and booked us up. So we got there at about 7.45 and the station was totally deserted. Good sign, no? So we went and asked where the 8.38 train was and were told that no such train exists, and in fact, our train left two hours ago along with our non-refundable 75EUR/each reservations. Swell.

After a momentary freakout and some tears from angela, I turned on what French I knew and my negotiating abilities and went to work. After about 2 hours and some help from a wonderful French man, we had tickets for the next day and 50eur each returned because we got the normal cars, like we wanted originally. Wonderful! And we got another night with andrew.

The next day, we did catch our train and met a really cool guy from buenes aires getting a PhD at the university of Missouri. Dario. He had a really nice camera and lens so we got to talking and ended up touring Venice all day with him the next day. Pretty cool! He left for Florence, but we are meeting him for dinner tonight.

Last night was our first time to stay with someone we didn't know at all, via couchsurfing.com. Her name is slyvia and she lives in Venice. We met her around 7 after we left dario. She was really nice, and her from Paris, sylvie, was incredibly cool. (she had a fashion mullet! Love it)

We went to an interpretive dance show that was THE weirdest thing I have ever seen, and I'm not just saying that. Picture this: white stage, white fog, white table: stage middle, woman in white night gown with tall fur boots on. She runs into the table, backs up, goes again. Repeat for 1.5 hours, add a pant suit, a chandelier on wheels, and train noises in the backgroud and you got it. Soo weird. So after that they took us to a bar and sylvie taught me to roll cigarettes, to save money. All in all, pretty fun.

In Florence now, hope to meet up with anna sometime! Its good to read all of your posts. Thomas, I dunno about laundry. Court, we'll be back soon! Miss you all.

Aaron