Florence, Day 1

At the lovely hour of 4 am, I awoke from a nonexistent sleep to get ready for our 4:45 a.m. bus to catch our 5:30 am train. The first train (from Bassano del Grappa to Padova) was entirely all CIU kids. Our next train (from Padova to Florence) was a EuroStar train, which was had much nicer seats and made less stops. By 10 am we were in Florence and on our way to our hostel.

Alex House was located on Borggio de' Greci Street in the central part of Florence. It essentially was a residential apartment. We were excited because 2 guys, 3 girls and another group of 7 girls all from our school were staying in this same hostel. But due to a "computer error" the 2 guys and 3 girls were overbooked and sent down to another hostel with bedrooms like caves. We were much more fortunate. Our bedroom had 4 twin beds, a dresser and vanity. The bathroom was next door and we shared it with two other rooms (which was a little bothersome when 3 people in a row would take showers). Overall, my first hostel experience was positive and I have not been scarred for life like the group of 10 guys whose hostel manager was named Jesus. Jesus overbooked their room and when they requested a refund a few hours after checking in, Jesus said he had spent all but 50 of the 300 euro they paid. The boys were a little freaked their money had gone to feed Jesus crack addiction. I'm not kidding.

Once we were rid of our heavy bags, we went to the Duomo, which is a beautiful, huge Cathedral. The dome was intricately painted, some parts in an almost 3-D way that you couldn't tell which was a painted dome and which was the actual building. This was my favorite sightseeing destination of my trip to Florence (or Firenze as I should properly say). After that we went to the Uffizi museum. We walked up a ridiculous amount of steps (a few flights of stairs in what looked like a palace) to get to the floor with art work. There were tons of portraits, many of which looked alike. Unfortunately, the museum didn't have the art work descriptions in English, so I really had no idea the meaning behind what I was looking at. When we were done with the day's art appreciation, we wondered the streets of Florence browsing through stores. Stuff there is either boutique expensive or off the street from a questionable vendor. By 5 pm, having been up since 4 am and walking around since 10 am, we were officially exhausted and returned to the hostel to rest and get ready for the evening.

Jenny, Sarah, Liz and I had a nice dinner (a first course, second course, salad and wine) for an affordable 12€. After which we met up with the CIU crew at a bar called Red Garder (although it sounds like a strip club, I assure you it is not). It is quite possible it's really named Red Garden, but none of us could figure it out. As an "american bar," there was a live band singing songs in English from the early 90s and they had special drink prices for students (which is much appreciated since 4.5€ for a drink is much better than the 8€ we had to pay Saturday!)