Florence

Florence here we come! If I remember correctly, Florence is about four hours from Rome. But if you haven’t noticed, I don’t remember correctly. We stopped at an overlook when we got close to Florence in order to take our official Contiki group photo. They chose a nice backdrop (the city of Florence) and it was taken by a professional which means it will be high quality, everyone will be in it, and they can charge us for it. I took a few pictures at the stop because the view was nice.

Poor statue never stood a chance.

When we got into Florence we were taken to a leather shop where they told us about the leather-making process and the best way to determine if something is real leather or fake leather. Florence is basically known for their leather. Ask me the leather trick some day and I’ll tell you.

We were then directed into their jewelry shop to learn about how to spend money on jewelry.

Woman: “Ladies, we have jewelry!”

Ladies: “OH MY GOD JEWELRY!”

Or something like that.

After the shop we had a walking tour of Florence but I had done enough walking yesterday and I was still wearing the crocs so I skipped it and went to lunch instead. It was OK though because my lunch table was in a square right by this cool building and as long as I take a picture of a cool building, I’m still sightseeing.

After lunch I just walked around for a bit. Got an espresso and some gelatto (GO ITALY!) and then it was time to hit the hotel. We met in another square before going to the bus and I stood in it while someone took a picture. Cool concept, right? I don’t know much about that church except that it’s called Basilica di Santa Croce and it complements my outfit pretty well. See my knock-off crocs? Oh yeah!

The hotel is nice except that it has a huge iron gate and spikes on the fence. I thought it was the U.N. or the embassy when we pulled up.

We have about an hour to get ready and then off to dinner!

Tonight we were taken to a lovely Italian restaurant somewhere in the Tuscan hills to have the standard five-course dinner with live entertainment. This was a much fancier atmosphere than the other dinners so the food was better, the servers wore white gloves, and the entertainer played piano. Even better - he looked like Meatloaf and sounded like Elton John. He was so animated that I don’t think I got a single non-blurry picture of him.

                    

Sometime during dinner I got into a fight with the head waiter about olive oil. Apparently dipping the table bread in olive oil is “not something they do” in Italy. I did not know this but apparently I was supposed to. People at our table had asked the staff several times to bring some but they kept saying they’d check and then ignore the request. Finally the guy came over and said “Since you keep asking for olive oil I will bring it over, but I don’t understand why you want it.” To which I replied: “Good thing you don’t have to understand why I want it and you can just bring it to me because I’m the f-cking customer and I asked you for some f-cking olive oil!”

No that’s crazy I was only thinking that. I remained very calm and tried to understand why he was so offended and explained to him that so many Italians / Italian restaurants I know dip their bread in olive oil before dinner. He shook his head and then lectured me about not ordering cappuccinos after lunch because Italians don’t do that and how if we asked for olive oil in Rome they would know that we weren’t Italian. Really? You sure it won’t be because I’ll be asking them for olive oil in ENGLISH?! YOU F-CKING MORON!  It was a weird, pointless discussion and the whole thing really tweaked me (and him apparently). I eventually calmed down after tripping him in the hallway and beating him to death with a wine bottle. No I’m sorry that didn’t happen I shouldn’t joke about that. Guy was a dick though. Moving on…

We went to some crappy club after dinner which wasn’t really that crappy but I don’t give a crap about clubs so I only stayed until like midnight then I left with Tracey. But then Tracey’s friends convinced her to stay and I left with my cab driver. Had you going for a second, right? Me too! Alright well it gets worse because I drank a Red Bull after dinner with plans of staying out late so when I got back to the hotel I couldn’t sleep. Fast forward to 2:30am when everyone is already home from the club and passed out and I’m taking my third Melatonin pill. FAIL! Hahaha. Oh well. Can’t win ‘em all!

Day 10 OVA!

PEACE!

PS. Sorry for all of the hyphenated profanity. That guy really got to me.