Arrival

Well people of the Americas, you've found me writing a second post on this blog thing, so YAY! I'm actually not quitting something semi immediately...

The first post I did ended up being almost a novel, and that never even reached the arrival in Europe.

To sum up the rest of the plane journey:
        Spent the gray hours in Frankfurt, then got driven about 2 miles across the tarmac by a very unsmiling German. (Not helping the cold and unfriendly stereotype here, Fritz)
        Boarded a very tiny Luftwaffe (oops, I totally mean Lufthansa) jet with a busload of Americans from my program and set off above the German countryside. Once again, WWII imaginations were buzzing through my head, and I had to convince my self that if I was a B-17 tail gunner fighting off German planes, I probably wouldn't be eating a mini-bowl of German cereal and coping with a middle-aged Danish man snoring in my ear.
        Looked up from the book I was reading at one point to see dawn over the Alps.  That was probably one of the coolest sights in my life.  Huge, majestic peaks, snow untouched by mankind, dotted here and there with tiny little hamlets. My family in Italy had existed at the foothills of the Alps, on the outskirts of the city of Verona, and I had grown up with stories of life in the mountains and sights of old postcards and placards saying "Saluti dalla Montagna" decorated with little embroidered Edelweiss, the flower that is considered the symbol of the Alps...Anyway enough of that stuff. What I'm trying to say was it was pretty cool.
         Had a pretty cinematic moment where the plane spent the entire journey through Italy in and above the clouds, so I never got a view of the continent. Then, as the pilot makes the descent into Florence, The cloud cover breaks, and I get this amazing view of green hills grid-marked with vineyards and olive groves and dotted with little red-roofed houses. Alright Italy, I'm impressed.

So, quick bus ride later, end up at the Gran Baglioni Hotel in the old section of Florence.  BOOM, this.hotel.is.effing.opulent.  Seriously, the door was opened by a old-school, impassive doorman. I'm not sure what type of card game the owners of this place were playing, but they lost a major bet, that is literally the only way that my program got us bunked in this place. Spent a couple of lovely days there, eating breakfast and dinner in the rooftop dining room.  Funny, the waiters don't seem pleased to see hundreds of American college students demanding cornflakes as opposed to the typical businessmen and royalty (I assume).

............Alright readers, here's the deal, it is currently three weeks since I arrived, and I only just decided to  continue this blogthingorwhatever.....going to condense the time in between....I've got a bottle of wine next to the laptop that says I can do it.....or it's just saying "Drinkkkkkkk Meeeeeee"

...Yea, it's the latter