Firenze! The First Day of My Long Journey

See ya later North Henderson!

Ciao everyone! Well after year of waiting and doing all the necessary preparations, I finally made it. I am in Florence, Italy and have spent the last three days in perpetual bliss. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect even after all the testimonials from professors, other students and various guidebooks, but when they say that Florence is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, they mean it. I have attached some photos of my trip from North Henderson, Illinois to Amsterdam to Florence. I'll tell you briefly about each of them.

We had a pretty good flight from Chicago to Amsterdam. We took off at 4:15 on Friday, January 7th. Our plane took about seven hours and we arrived in Amsterdam around 7 o' clock the next day, jumping ahead six hours. We were tired and hungry despite the two meals they provided us on the plane ride (along with complimentary bottles of wine), so once we got off the plane and into the airport we looked around at what Amsterdam had to offer. One of the first things we noticed is that stores in the Amsterdam airport sell hazardous "delicacies" by the bulk. These Camel cigarettes with "Roken is dodelijk" (Smoking is Dangerous) on them were sold at about 20 euro and came in a bundle of ten packs. Our friend Coop, would have been satisfied in Amsterdam.

Here are some of the hundreds of packages of chocolates that lined the walls of almost every Amsterdam store. Although we never tried any, they sure made our taste buds water, especially when we found a chocolates the size and shape of rocks at a kiosk.  (See a few images below)

The Amsterdam airport had some pretty interesting furniture to lounge on while we waited for our next plane...

... so naturally, we had a little rest.

You know an airport is legitimate when it has it's very own library! This place sidetracked us from our journey to our next gate for quite some time. We purveyed a bunch of children's books, some Dutch comics and even lounged on some the cool seats they had by the jumbo-tron sized television sets.

More chocolate...

Dozens of different flavors of every kind of candy imaginable. See parents, you can take your kids to Amsterdam too!

Amsterdam sunrise (Around 7:30- 8:00 in the morning)

Chocolate by the pound.

Delicacies and culture shock aside, the flight to Amsterdam left us pretty beat, so after a small interrogation session with the stewardesses at the front of the terminal (They didn't understand why we didn't have a VISA since we were visiting the country for so long. We explained to them that we weren't required to have one since we'd only be in Florence for less than 90 days). After we showed them our birth certificates, our acceptance letters and ACM packets they let us on the plane. Thankfully, we had an entire row to ourselves so we were able to sleep on the two hour ride over to Florence. I didn't sleep very well, but enough to get me by. 

Our trouble really started once we hit European soil. The spiraling mountains in the background of the gray Florentine sky didn't settle us once we learned our luggage had not arrived. All my clothes and my contact lens solution and cases were in that bag, along with other toiletries. Jamie, unfortunately, had many of his chargers and clothes in his bag as well. So we stood in line at Florence Lost and Found for about an hour and told them the address of the hotel we were staying at (Hotel Duca D'Aosta) and the building we would be attending school (Linguaviva), so hopefully they'll get it to us tomorrow (They didn't. As of today, I've still been wearing the same blue sweater, pants and moccasins I was wearing on the day I left. If anymore time goes by I'll have a beard before too long). 

Eventually, we left the airport, got on a bus for 5 euro, listened to the driver and a teenager talk about women, life, coffee, cigarettes and art (or at least I like to think so, in actuality I don't know a word of what they were saying...), then we arrived at the train station, wandered around for awhile, our backpacks weighing us down, and by the act of the Gods we happened across our hotel in some back alley. And before you knew it, we were in our room after what had been a twenty-four hour journey to one of the best cities in the world.

An end to a very long day, but also the start to a very long journey.