Bobby and David's Excellent Adventure: Ciao

Well it's been a couple days since my last email, but we finally made it to Italy!

We slept for about 2 hours on the hard wood floor in the girls' room. They had to leave for the airport a 6:30 am, so we headed downstairs and parked ourselves in the computer lab for the day. It wasnt too bad because it drizzled for much of the day, and we had unlimitd internet. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the night back home, so there wasn't much news popping up on espn.com which I was checking every 10 min. We finally headed to the train station and were a little worried about the sleeping cars because they are incredibly small, and we didn't know who our bunk mates would be. We lucked out. Bobby and I shared a cabin with 4 American girls. They were very nice, and it made for a very pleasant trip.

We arrived in Florence on Tuesday morning at about 8 am and set out for the Duomo where we were meeting my friend Matt. After walking a couple blocks we discovered that we didn't recognize any street names and then realized that we were at the wrong station. It turns out the night trains arrive at smaller station. But, we again lucked out when we found that there is a free train to the main station. We met up with Matt, dropped our stuff, and took a walk around Florence. The city is very nice. It is smaller than I expected, but we really haven't explored much of it yet.

One thing I do know is that the food is delicious. I had some great ravioli for lunch, and some tasty pizza for dinner.

One of our coworkers Rachel is also in Florence, and she lives right around the corner from Matt. They have become good friends. She lives with 5 girls, all from SDSU. It's been nice hanging out with familiar faces. Tuesday night we went to a bar that is very popular with the Americans. It was packed. Every other place in the city was quiet, because this place had one huge advantage. BEER PONG. On Tuesday nights they set out cups and balls, and the Americans go crazy. We spent the night there with Matt and Rachel's roommates and had a grand ol' time.

But we paid for it today. Well Bobby did anyways. I woke up bright and early at noon, talked with Rachel's roommates, did my laundry, and tried to clean up their kitchen. Bobby woke up around 3 and made a few grumbles. The day was shot, but we have 4 days here and tomorrow will be our sightseeing day. Tonight we are probably headed to a place called Tijuanas for some nice "authentic" Mexican cuisine..

OK, now for the downside of this email. I'm kinda ready to come home. It's a combination of being worn out from 2 weeks of travel, realizing we still have 2 more weeks to go, and that I am way out of my comfort zone here. Luckily, I have all these people from back home to hang out with for a couple more days.

Next, it's off to Rome which should be good.

David