Oh The Places We’ll Go

It’s Boxing Day, otherwise known as the day after Christmas, and nothing is open. I guess usually on Boxing Day people go around to their friends houses and give their gifts, spreading holiday cheer, etc. You get the day off, drink the night away, and have a good time. I guess we just don’t do that in America. Maybe we’re just not cool enough. I think it’s more that we can’t afford to give up more holiday time to people so Boxing Day is a bit of a pointless day, but I get the idea. Christmas is for family, Boxing Day is for friends.

Since nothing is open, likely Boxing Day for Erica and I will be rotting and chilling. I’m trying to get some information on how to make an apple pie, since Erica and I need something to do and I’m craving an apple pie, so we’ll see if that all works out. We wandered around the flea market again and I was finally able to withdraw some money from an ATM! I’ve been waiting in vain for days for this financial aid disbursement and it finally came. Thank God.

To catch everyone up on what we’ve been doing here, Athens has been a pretty laid back vacation. There’s not a lot to do in comparison to cities like Paris and Rome, where you’re literally running around all day like a chicken with its head cut off. Athens is more of a stop and smell the roses kind of place, or at least for us it has been. We wandered around the flea market and some of the ancient ruins on our first day here. I think we saw the Temple of Zeus? Something related to Zeus, I’m not sure. Anyways, all of the ruins and sights here are my favorite “f” word- FREE! That’s all of the ruins, the parks, the Acropolis. Everything, free. Well, for students of the EU at least. Got to love that University of Glasgow student card, getting me discounts everywhere!

We made it to the Acropolis on our second day here. The hostel we’re staying at is right next to the Acropolis so finding it wasn’t hard at all. I guess it wouldn’t be very hard either way- it’s a humongous hill that you can see from anywhere in the city so I doubt it’d be much of a problem finding it. Acropolis hill is really cool. Quite the hike to the top, let me tell you. It’s not at all touristy like things in Rome are, just surrounded by men pretending to be ancient Romans. The Acropolis is very tourist free, just take it as it is, naturally. Refreshing, really. When you get to the top of the hill, you can literally see the entirety of Athens from the top, it’s up so high. The Parthenon is amazing, as you’d think it would be. Funny to think that all these years of being in school and everything, I’m finally looking at one of the most famous ancient buildings in the history of the world. Athens, as it turns out, is a sprawling city. I never thought it was as big as it is from stories and pictures and things. From the top of the hill it’s literally just spread out for miles and miles in every direction. It’s almost a little scary when you look at it from up high like at the Acropolis. But then again, I think something like a third of the population of Greece lives in Athens so it all makes sense.

Other than wandering around the Acropolis and the flea markets, we’ve made it to the ocean (well, bodies of water) twice. First, we went out to Pireus I think it’s called to see the port. Really just to see a body of water, I guess. We’ve been missing that from not being in Santa Barbara, so being at the port was nice. Especially because the weather was pretty sunny that day and not as cold as it had been before. There’s a bunch of scary people down at the port, though, going after the tourists. African men selling the fake bags and cat calling at you. Not fun. Our only little scary adventure in Athens wasn’t really in Athens at all. We randomly decided to take this orange regional bus out to the beach since we saw a brochure about how to do it, so we hopped on the bus and headed for what we assumed to be a close beach to Athens. Not so much. We were literally on this bus for like, an hour before we were like, alright… let’s get off this thing. Haha. The drive was pretty gorgeous, all along the windy road that lines the ocean and everything. Relaxing and everything, I guess, but not when you have no clue what you’re doing or where you’re going. We hopped off the bus, chilled at the beach for a little bit, and hopped on the bus again back into Athens. Oh, how exciting. Haha. We got back and were just relieved that we didn’t get lost/hijacked/kidnapped, etc seeing as how we had no clue what we were doing! A good story, though.

Christmas was good on the food end, but I’d trade being in California any day. It just didn’t feel like Christmas. No pine smells, sugar cookies, gifts under the tree, going Christmas light looking or anything. It doesn’t snow in Rocklin so I can’t really say anything about “White Christmases” and all, but for what I’m used to the holidays never really felt like they were here. The hostel set up this big Christmas dinner for everyone around, so all of us got together and had turkey, stuffing, veggies, all of the usual things you’d have for Christmas dinner. Again, all for my favorite “f” word- free. Erica’s first Christmas dinner too. Haha. Figures. She walked up to me on Christmas morning and just goes, “Look, I’m wearing a green sweater for Christmas, all for you!”

My last American leaves on the 30th and I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back to Glasgow. The thought is really depressing, that’s for sure. I wonder what the new Americans are going to be like when they move in to the 2nd and 3rd floor. The Duke and Dartmouth kids were living there before, so there’s a bunch of empty spaces left for more study abroad kids to move into. Plans for New Year’s at the moment are a little up in the air, since the tickets for Glasgow Downtown are sold out. I think Erin’s working on getting it all figured out but we’ll see what happens. As long as everyone’s together and drunk and merry I don’t think it really matters where we are. What am I going to watch, though? I don’t think Brits watch the ball drop in Times Square… I didn’t even think of that until now.

Erica and I are off to find some pie supplies… find something to do with our laid back day. Merry Belated Christmas from Greece and I’ll be sure to post more about Delphi when we get back from there tomorrow.

-Catherine

Erica and I are on day 3 of our Greek excursion and we’re having a good time…

To pick up where I left off, we had a lot of time to kill in London and made our way around the city, re-seeing everything, falling, and catching a train to Gatwick to catch our plane.  We had to practically run the entire time we were in the airport since security was INSANE.  We showed up around an hour and a half early and that still wasn’t enough time.  We checked in our bags at Easyjet, made our way to security which took absolutely FOREVER and then almost ran the entire way to the gate, which was of course the furthest one away possible, before getting on the plane.  Luckily we were one of the few rows that didn’t have anyone sitting in between us.  Maybe we smelled from the lack of showering or teeth brushing all day?  Who knows.  I don’t think the Greeks looking for seats liked us very much.  Sleeping on the plane, just as with the bus, was impossible.  I had fun dozing off, people watching, and attempting to read my book.  3 hours later, we got into Greece.

Athens is a very modern city considering the fact that it’s one of the most historically ancient cities in the world.  You know, Athenians, Gods, Zeus and all.  Everything is written in Greek and in English so getting around is really easy.  Plus, everyone speaks a lick of English so asking questions hasn’t been impossible so far.  Very surprising, since all through my travels in Europe there are at least SOME people who don’t speak English and that’s not the case here.  The metro from the airport took about 45 minutes to get into the city center, but it was cheap so we didn’t mind.  Finding the hostel was really easy.  Lots of cool, young people staying here.  Lots of Americans, surprisingly enough since most of the time you tend to run into more of the Aussie Brit crowd in hostels, but that’s not the case here.  Our room has some intense snorers, let me tell you.  I think Erica got the worst end of it though, with an older man sleeping underneath her bunk.  I’m surprised she’s getting any sleep.

My hands are hurting so I’ll update more of Greece later.  Christmas in 2 days… can’t wait!

(Oh, and Happy Hanukkah for Erica)

-Catherine

Erica and I finally made it to Greece after TOO long of traveling, bussing, flying, running, and falling all over the UK.  Everyone left the flat by the time Saturday rolled around, finals were done and papers were turned in.  Anna and I were the last 2 in the flat.  I’d been working on my jigsaw puzzle that finally came in, all 1,000 pieces by myself.  Oh, what an exciting life I lead.  Grabbed a cab at around 10:30 and headed over to the bus station for the overnight bus down to London.  Thankfully I got sat next to a sane, normal person and was close to Erica, who was across the aisle from me.  The girl I sat next to was from Calgary, and I talked her ear off.  I tend to do that to most people I travel near.  Cabbies.  People I sit next to.  I almost feel bad.  Almost.

Anyways, the bus was… a bus.  Long and boring, weird combination of smells and impossible to sleep.  My neck was hurting after a while of trying to fall asleep so I mostly just sat up and daydreamed until the 8 hours passed by.  We got into Victoria station at around 8:30 in the morning with a few hours to kill so Erica and I walked around London for a while.  We actually did a good amount of walking by the end of it.  We went from Trafalgar Square all around to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament.  A lot of walking but a lot of re-sight seeing since we’d see it all before.  I took the HUGEST dive in front of one of the buildings near Buckingham Palace though.  Not only did I manage to trip and fall in the dirt, but like full on spread and roll onto the ground, afterwards dropping all of my change and saying, out loud, “My life sucks right now.”  It was insanely mortifying.

Will update more about Greece when I feel like paying the Euros to use the internet.  Very pretty here and no rioting yet!

-Catherine

It’s that time of the term again.  Time to buckle down, lock yourself in the library, and read until your eyes start to bleed and you’re spouting facts out about Samuel Johnson and Richard Savage that no human should ever know.  Welcome to what will be consuming me for the next few days.

I’ve been on the major procrastination bandwagon the last few days.  I should have started these papers (yes, there are multiple that I haven’t started) a couple days ago, and I didn’t.  I don’t know what has gotten into me, since usually I’m pretty good at shutting my computer, walking away, and getting down to work, but this term just hasn’t been my term.  I haven’t been on my game as far as academics go.  It’s not like it’s all that different of an atmosphere from home.  There are still things that you’re supposed to read every week, talk about and write down notes.  But when it comes down to it, I haven’t had a single productive day in the library aside from the day I spent writing the last paper I turned in, and even then the paper wasn’t anything of amazing quality.  My brain just isn’t cooperating this semester for whatever reason, and I’m about to be paying the consequences.

My sleep cycle is starting to take its toll on me.  Staying up until 630 this morning probably wasn’t the wisest idea, since I didn’t wake up until 1 and didn’t start accomplishing anything until much later.  I’m making myself sleep within the next half hour so I can avoid another afternoon wakeup time since I have a lot of work to do tomorrow… hopefully that way my sleep cycle isn’t all messed up like it has been for the last MONTH.  I’m tired of waking up at 3pm and hating myself for sleeping through my alarm clock… it’s gotta stop.

After I finish these next couple of papers my life is FREEDOM for a good number of weeks.  I’ve got a couple of books I want to sit back, relax and read, a few places I want to wander off to so I can relax, just looking forward to the break from the stress and everything.  Greece, obviously, is another highlight of the next couple of weeks but I can’t give myself the luxury of daydreaming about it for now since I have to focus, but I’m very excited about going.  I don’t know how I feel about missing out on Christmas back home since I’ve never done that before, but having Erica around and handy will keep my mind off of it.  I have no idea what we’re going to do for a Christmas dinner in Athens since I think a lot of the restaurants may be closed, but maybe we’ll make something.  Erica’s Jewish so maybe she’ll make me some latkas?  However you spell them.

I signed up for an unlimited calls to the world subscription through Skype yesterday.  Now I’ll be able to call anywhere in the states anytime for as long as I want instead of paying by minute.  I’ve also got an online phone number set up, which is a Sacramento-local area code phone number that anyone can call for the same cost as any normal phone call would, but it connects you to my Skype.  That way if anyone calls it and I’m near my computer, they can call and talk to me in Scotland for nearly nothing when it would cost a fortune calling my cell phone directly.  I’m always amazed by how technology works, to think that people can call Scotland for nearly nothing through a computer program.  Amazing.  Skype has been my lifesaver since I have been here, for sure.  I was really afraid I’d feel homesick all the time being away from California and all, but I can call my Dad’s cell anytime I want to talk sports with him and it’s no big deal, so it’s not like anything is drastically different.

I’m hoping this holiday lull will go away for me soon.  It’s messing up my normally cheery mood and making me into this black cloud hovering over the apartment like the plague.  Maybe it’s because the holidays are rolling around and I won’t be around family; I’m not quite sure what it is.  All I know is that for the last week or so I’ve been secluded, anti-social, and dreary.  Like I said earlier, I’m just looking forward to a break from everything and everyone to go into myself for a little bit, if you get what I mean.  Sometimes I think it’s just overwhelming being around the same people all the time, every day, all day long.  A someone who cherishes their privacy, sometimes I just want to escape from everything and do my own thing without having to tell anyone or go with anyone there.  Do it for myself.

After the papers are all done and I’ve had myself a good nap after all of the work, I’ll post more pictures and elaborate on the goings on around here… but I don’t have enough time to do an extended proper post until then.

Wish me luck…

-Catherine

This is an obviously delayed post, but I made up for the lateness with all the postings I’ve been doing today- swear!  If you look below this post you can see one dedicated with a picture gallery to the Pub Golf extravaganza on my birthday and there’s even some pictures below that from my trip to the amusement park down in Kilmarnock.

Since the beginning of November, my last post, I haven’t done much traveling other than this last weekend, but more relaxing than anything else.  We had our reading and writing week during my birthday, during which I got nothing done, and then afterwards I had to settle down and work on my paper for GC 14, Renaissance Literature.  I turned that in during the first week of November and am doing my GC 15 one this week before I go to Barcelona.  I didn’t really do much the weekend of the 7th simply because I wasn’t in the mood for going out and was feeling unlike myself.  I was really tired, in a somber mood for no reason in particular and just wanted to stay in.

School is getting more and more stressful as it approaches December since that’s when all of my big deadlines are.  I have presentations in both of my tutorials within the next couple weeks before December and that means a LOT of reading and research before giving them.  Not to mention that I still need to do my GC 15 essay (YIKES!) before December 1st (that’s the deadline I’m giving myself) and working on the 2 essays that I have to turn in before December 10th, which is the end of the term.  December is going to be really stressful but I know it’ll all work out for the better with everything.  After December 10th my life will be FREE and happy, waiting to go to Athens and celebrate Christmas and everything.

Other than school I’ve been hanging out a lot with my housemates and just relaxing.  We’re a close bunch and hang out a lot so I’m happy I live where I do.  We watch a lot of Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy and random movies together.  Lately we’ve watched Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar 2 and Forrest Gump!  Great movie.  I think Nicola was finally satisfied hearing a real Southern voice since she’s been saying “I love you Jenny” like how she thinks Forrest Gump talks for the last month!  Haha.  She’s Irish so her I’m-Irish-trying-to-be-Southern accent is absolutely hilarious.  She says lots of things like “What’s the crack” (What’s up) or “Gluck!” (Good luck).  All of her fake Southern accents make her sound like this constipated old man with a really deep voice.  Haha.

I’m happy I’m still able to keep up with my California TV shows, especially my sports.  I haven’t watched much since baseball and the World Series, but was lucky enough to see some of the Warriors game against the Clippers the other day.  I miss basketball a lot and the times are always bad that it’s on, but I’ve been listening to the interviews on KNBR that the Razor and Mr. T do with Don Nelson and the players and everything, so I don’t feel as outside of it as I thought I would.  One thing I do miss is ESPN since I obviously can’t watch it out here.  Constant sports updates 24 hours a day?  You don’t know what great things you’ve got until they’re gone!

I got a good dose of European sport this last weekend at a rugby match I went to with the Californians and the locals.  I woke up at around 7:30 and left my flat at 8:45 to meet up with Erica, my friend from UCSB, and the other Californians to go to Harriet’s flat, a girl who studied abroad from Glasgow at UCSB last year.  She’s from London and is a big rugby fan, so she’s the one who got us the tickets.  We hitched a cab to the train station and then got on the next train up to Edinburgh, which is about 30 minutes way on the train and really cheap.  The girls all painted their nails the Scotland Flag, minus Claire who is half South Africa and was all Springboks’d out, South African flag on her nails and all.

Once we got to the stop right before the city, we hung out and painted each others faces with the different country flags before grabbing some fish and chips and heading to Murrayfield, where the Scotland national team plays.  They sell hotdogs at the parks here, which I thought was really strange since it’s such a baseball food.  Weirdos!  There were lots of people there all decked out in the Scotland flag with weird hats with the Loch Ness monster going through them.  Lots of Scotland scarves, hats, light up things, etc.  Our seats were insanely close to the pitch, which was fun with our hour to spare since we got to see all the guys warming up before the game.  Let’s just say rugby players are very very in shape.. and we got to see them up close and personal.  Stretching.  Bending over. In really tight spandex.  It was like Christmas… but with boys.  So much better.

The game started at 2:30 (or half 2 as they would say here), and Scotland was off to a good start.  I don’t understand the rules much for rugby, but I know that you score a try, which is like a touchdown, and can also score by kicking through the fieldgoal post type thingy.  Kinda like football… but moves a lot faster.  Scotland was up 10-0 early but the World Cup Champion South Africans came back and ended up winning by 4.  Since Scotland is not very highly ranked it was a big deal they almost won the game, but disappointing that they gave up the lead and lost.  Good game though and lots of fun!  I’ve been missing sport so watching something in person was absolutely amazing!

After the game the entire stadium emptied out and walked into town (Edinburgh) to have a post game drink.  We all got a beer at a pub and watched Ireland lose to the All Blacks and the beautiful Dan Carter, who plays for New Zealand.  After we got a snack and a beer, I headed back to Glasgow to relax and catch up on some sleep on the train while the others stayed behind to party the night away.  After seeing a game in person, rugby is a fantastic sport!  I’m going to try and go to another game soon- likely the Glasgow Warriors and the Edinburgh team in January.  Should be amazing!

Other than rugby, I finally got around to playing beer pong with Liam, the Cockney Londoner with the cool accent, Elizabeth and 2 of the Americans.  The red cups Mom sent from home worked a lot better than the crap cups they have here, and we played a good number of games before we were all too drunk to carry on.  Beer pong was a great success this time around- Thankfully!  I think we’ll be playing a lot more often now that people know what they’re doing and not just chucking the ping pong ball around.

I’m adding my rugby gallery to the end of this post so everyone can see some pictures from the game.  If you click on the photos, the caption will give you a description of what’s going on in the picture.

Hope things are good back in California- leave some comments to keep me up to date on life and everything!

-Catherine

Here’s some long delayed photos from my birthday.  You can click on the photos and look at the gallery with the captions and everything.  If you want the full scoop, there’s a whole description of the night a couple posts down.  Also look at the amusement park photos below!

I figured I haven’t posted some photos of my adventures in a while so I’d give you guys some photos of random adventures.  Here are the ones from going to the amusement park in Kilmarnock with the ladies on a very very rainy day making for an interesting roller coaster riding experience.

Yes, I am aware that it has been over a week since I have last posted.  So sue me.  It has been a busy, crazy, wonderful, confusing, all of the above kind of week.  

I am officially 20 years old, which to people here means “I’m getting old”.  The only girl older than me that I live with is my roommate Laura, who turns 21 in the beginning of next year.  Everyone else is 18, and not being a teenager makes me old.  Before you know it I’ll be spouting wrinkles out of my face, my limbs will give, I’ll need a hip replacement, and I’ll just wear pajamas all day.

My birthday festivities were absolutely amazing.  I’ve had good birthdays before, but my birthday this year was far and wide one of the best birthdays of my life.  My parents managed to send me some gifts so it was like it wasn’t all that different from any other year.  Back in Santa Barbara I’d get a few cards and some little things from my parents.  I had thought I’d start feeling homesick around my birthday, but after I realized it’s just about the same as it would be in California, the feeling went away.  The girls in my flat and the Americans gave me a little surprise birthday party at midnight of the 29th/30th complete with cake, ice cream (mind you, it’s almost snowing outside), and a blow-up doll we dubbed William Wallace.  I wasn’t expecting anything so I was geniunely shocked they put so much effort into making my birthday all festive and fun for me.  I opened my parents gifts they gave me during my mini party: an Obama t-shirt and Obama bobblehead.  A little awkward opening them since 2 of the Americans are Republicans, but I was excited so I don’t think it really mattered much.

My actual birthday was… epic.  No exaggeration.  I had been planning on doing Pub Golf for about a month before my birthday had even come up in conversation after doing our last pub crawl.  Pub Golf essentially requires all participants to dress up like golfers and go around to 9 holes (pubs) and drink different drinks in a certain number of pars (gulps), aiming for the lowest score to “win”.  I had organized the whole thing: all the different Underground stops we were doing, the rules, the addresses of the pubs, the pars for all the drinks, and the drink progression.  We left the flat around 6:30 and headed down to Curlers for our first drink: Jaegerbombs.  I managed to round up 10 people for pub golfing, a good showing if I say so myself, so ordering 10 Jaegerbombs got me a strange stare but as we got drunker and stopped caring as much people were staring, all the insecurity about it faded away.

Jaegerbomb consumed, we hopped on the Underground, unable to lean or sit down while the train was moving (per pub golfing rules), swaying back and forth with the train until it got to the next stop.  One tequila shot, pint of Guinness, bottle of Corona, vodka lemonade, sambuca, white wine, blue girlie drink, and apple sour shot later, we landed on Buchanan Street properly drunk out of our minds, William Wallace in tow decked out in my Giants jersey.  Megan puked on the street.  We were refused from Waxy O’Connor’s (the 9th hole).  And I fell onto the street on Buchanan.  Twice.  Bruises to prove it.  To end the evening, and complete the course, we descended on Bar Buddha, who carry the most delicious strawberry cosmopolitans, and from there the rest of the night gets a bit fuzzy.  I spilled over half of my cosmo, somehow got someone to buy me another one, comforted a drunk girl in the bathroom, and took a cab home, falling asleep in my bed with all my clothes on.  I spottily remember the getting home part of the story, and still have no idea why I just up and left Buddha in the middle of the night.  It’s a mystery.

After the recovery, I stayed in and watched my first Warriors game of the season instead of tramping around for Halloween.  I’m pretty optimistic about the squad this year.  Nellie always does a good job with the team, and I feel like we’ve gotten bigger (height wise, of course), so the rebounding has gotten a lot better.  Still miss Baron Davis but the new guys have stepped up pretty well so far.  We’ve still got swagger and attitude, and that’ll do us well this season.  I’m amazed Matt Barnes is doing so well out in Phoenix.  He’s starting for them and scored something like 21 points last night, +18 differential.  Crazy.  Happy for him, though… Barnes was a good guy for Golden State just like Baron Davis.  No hate there.

It’s going to be a long day or two for me since I’ve slacked on my papers and have to get down and dirty with them.  It’ll be like studying for midterms: very very little sleep and pounding tons of information into your brain at once in a very short amount of time.  Luckily I did a good job today and have a focused topic for my paper (and an interesting one at that), so it shouldn’t be too painful tomorrow afternoon sitting down and just doing it.  

I’m going to post all of the pub golfing pictures to my flickr account so you can click over there if you want to oogle at the ridiculousness that was my birthday.

Hope things are well back in the States!

-Catherine

We made it to Florence this morning after spending our last night hanging out with the British girls in Rome.  I must’ve woken up at like, 5 o’clock this morning before laying back down for another hour or so to relax before getting up and moving around, packing up our stuff and planning out the rest of our day.  We checked out of our hostel this morning around 9, put on our packs and made our last trip on the Metro in Rome to the Termini, where we waited around, had a McMuffin, and boarded our Eurostar train to Florence, which they call ‘Firenze’ here in Italy.  We sat next to these two old Italian people headed to Milan on the train, who understood NO english but we could tell they were friendly, nice people.

The ride to Florence is absolutely beautiful.  THIS is where the beauty in Italy comes from: the small towns, the fields, the little old houses in the middle of vineyards and rolling hills throughout the country.  No graffiti, no nonsense- just pure beauty.  The train ride lasted a little over an hour and a half into Florence, so after the train stopped Thomas and I got off and tried figuring out how to make it to our new hostel.  This hostel was a lot more difficult to find than our last one, especially since Florence doesn’t have a metro system since it’s much smaller than Rome.  We got on a bus like our hostel directions said, but even after we asked the bus driver if the stop we needed was on his line, he never told us WHAT stop we had to get off on.  So, after getting lost, Thomas and I walked with our packs on in the heat for well over 20 minutes before we found our hostel.

This hostel, the Soggiorno Pitti, is MUCH nicer than the one in Rome.  They have TV, which I said a ‘Halleilujah’ for, and we have our own room and bathroom in the hostel.  Turns out we have to share a bed, which is… whatever, it is what it is, we came from the same place so it’s not a big deal.  We got a chance to catch a little bit of the Olympics finally, since we haven’t seen any of it yet, so we watched a couple of swimming heats before getting our room.  We have a TV in our room, but it only has like, 10 channels and all of them (of course) are in Italian.  After settling in, we watched a little bit of MTV Italia, and their version of TRL was on.  It was pretty funny since all of the music videos for the Italian artists are SO BAD, but they still have at least a couple of American and British music videos on their countdown.  Randomly, the top 2 songs on their playlist were ‘Killing Me Softly’ by The Fugees and ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ by Michael Bolton.  Random?  We thought so.

So our plan for tomorrow is to explore Florence since we’ve only got 1 day here to really look around, so I think we’re going to go and see the Galleria dell’Accademia where Michaelangelo’s David is, and the Uffizi Art Gallery where a lot of famous pieces of art are.  It’s going to be a busy busy day with a lot of walking but Florence is a small town so I doubt it’ll be too strenuous, especially since we don’t have to wear our packs everywhere.

I haven’t been able to put our pictures up on the internet yet, but when I have the chance I’ll try and show everyone what our travels have been like.

Ciao