Vive Barcelona!: Firenze y Pisa!

Bongiorno! I have no idea if thats how you spell that. Anyways, it's Monday night, well I guess Tuesday morning at 2 am. I cant sleep and I'm thinking its because I took a two hour nap today but I'm still sooo exhausted so I'm not exactly sure what the deal is, even though I haven't been sleeping very much for the past few weeks now...annoying. Buuut I just got back from Florence yesterday and it was seriously incredible! We (meaning me, Nickie and Gracie) left on Friday at around 4..took the train to Girona bus station then a bus to the Girona airport, from there we got on the plane and flew to Pisa, Italy where we took a bus into Florence and finally a taxi to our hostel. All in all it took us around 6 hours just to get there. The hostel was pretty funny. It felt just like summer camp, we checked in and the guy at the front handed us our sheets and our towel for the weekend as well as our room keys. When we walked in the room there were already 4 people asleep so we had to stumble around the room and make our beds before we finally got to sleep! In the morning we got up early and walked aimlessly to find some breakfast. After a cappuccino and a croissant we headed into town toward the Duomo. Florence is tiny so we walked around every where. On our way to the duomo we ran into tons of cute little market places and plazas so I took a ton of pictures on the way. When we got there it was 8 euro to go to the top but we wanted to do it. So we paid 8 euro to literally scale (not climb) 436 stairs. It was intense. But totally worth it once we got to the top. We immeadiately took in a 360 degree view of Florence that was absolutely breath taking. We stood up there for a good 25 minutes and I took about a 1000 pictures. The climb down was a lot scarier than the way up, some of the flights of stairs were really steep like you were climbing a ladder. We stopped inside the dome to look at the ceiling that was painted by Michealangalo himself. It depicted the limbo between heaven and hell. I didn't stay for long because we were pretty high up and I was a little freaked.

At the top of the Duomo we spotted this huge market street so naturally we went to find it. After about 30 minutes we found this huuuge stretch of little tent covered shops. I could have spent days there and about a billion dollars. I bought a little purse, a cheap scarf and some sunglasses that were all for a pretty good price. Afterward we met up with one of Nickie's friends from high school, Christiana, for lunch. She took us to this cute little cafe and then showed us around the city. But the best part was when she took us to this 1 euro gelato place that was seriously amazing. I got cookies and cream and I dont think I've ever had anything better. Since we'd gotten in so late the night before the 3 of us made the trek back to the hostel took a 2 hour nap and got ready for dinner. We found a little cafe down the street and Gracie and I both got pizza. It was delicious. Way different than the pizza in the States a lot less filling but seriously amazing. I ate the entire thing and it was pretty big. We also split a bottle of wine which was also delicious.

After dinner we headed into town to meet up with some of Gracie's friends at a little bar. It was weird in Florence because EVERYONE spoke english, which I thought was so weird being that Florence is way smaller and less cosmopolitan then Barcelona and no one speaks english here. But it was really nice that we didn't have to struggle with Italian anywhere we went. Although, we did struggle with the Italian men..they are another story. I'm sure Dad is thanking his lucky stars I'm not in Italy. Anyways we didnt stay out late cause we had to get up early the next morning to check out. We decided that we were going to head back into Pisa early for our flight to check out the leaning tower and explore a little bit. But of course when we got there the weather started to turn. We made it to the tower which was really cool! I didn't expect it to be leaning so much. There were tons of tourist and of course we took the classic pic next to the tower like were trying to hold it up. We had lots of time to kill because as we learned there isn't much in Pisa besides the tower. So we went to get lunch, Gracie and I both had pizza again and we both finished the entire things, again. As we were eating it started to torrentially downpour so we sat and watched it rain for a good hour and when it stopped we made a break for it to the bus and back to the airport when it really started to pour, and that was the end of our trip to Italy! It was a quick one but weirdly I was ready to be back in Barcelona and get a good nights sleep (which I have yet to get) in my own bed. Alrighty I'm going to attempt to go to sleep now, I have a long week of school ahead of me...lots of reading and a stupid spanish test on Wednesday. Congratulations to all the new Deltas!!!! Can't wait too meet you all!!