The Kickoff - Day One, Two, Three

We have FINALLY arrived at our apartment in Florence, and we are not sure that we have EVER been so tired in our entire lives! We have basically been awake for the last 36 hours. What a trip this has been! After going to bed at 1:00am and waking up at 3:30am on Monday, we rushed to the airport only to get bumped off of the first two flights to Atlanta that we attempted to catch. When we saw that we were number 30 on the standby list for the third Atlanta flight, we were both wishing we had slept a little longer. Luckily, McDonald's came to the rescue with a gourmet breakfast, and we felt much better about the whole thing. Also, we came across a really nice lady who told us we should look into flights to New York. Little did we know, the flights to New York were wide open all morning! We quickly got the friendly Delta representatives at LAX to change our reservation, and the journey officially began to Italy.

The first flight was pretty easy as we both slept about half the time in an effort to make up for the lost sleep the night before we left. When we arrived in New York, we ended up sitting on the runway for over an hour because there were no open gates for our plane to park. This is when we nervously called Chel'sea (you are the best!) to make sure that we still had a good chance of making it on the flight to Rome. After getting off the plane and running to our next gate (and the bathroom!), we were pleasantly surprised to get seats in business class for the flight from New York to Rome. Let us tell you, we have never been so happy to be on a flight! We even talked about doing our best to avoid falling asleep so that we could enjoy our special seats. The experience started with the flight attendants offering us orange juice and champagne. They then brought us a three-course meal that was topped off with "bomb" ice cream sundaes. After dinner, we watched a movie and listened to our pre-selected playlists from the music on the plan. Finally, we gave in to our exhausted bodies and put the seats in the "sleep" position for the remaining three hours of the flight. We were awoken by the flight attendants for breakfast. What a life! We both agreed at the end of the trip that we wished the flight had lasted longer. Little did we know that we would feel that way even more as the day continued.

Unfortunately, upon our arrival in Rome, we discovered that our luggage did not make the trip with us. It did not seem like too big of a deal until we were informed that it would take three days (give or take a day) to receive our suitcases. We were wishing that we had taken our moms' and Chel'sea's advice to pack some additional clothes in our carry-on bags, but we did not do this so we are hanging out in Florence in 90 degree weather with black pants and fancy shirts that officially smell terrible. The scary part is that we will be sleeping in these clothes (that is right- neither of us have pajamas here) AND wearing these same charming outfits for the next several days. We decided to "think good thoughts" about our bags and just move on with the trip. We must have still been on a high from sitting in business class!

We found a few nice people in the Rome airport to direct us to the train station for our ride to Florence. We had an easy time finding the train to downtown Rome and then figured out where to go to catch a train to Florence. While at the train station, we were both very afraid of gypsies stealing our purses/wallets/passports, but we got lucky and only saw one woman who asked us for money. We both barked a quick "NO!" at her and moved on to our second-class train cabin (which was very nice, by the way). This is where we officially met Tom, our first Florence friend. Our seats were directly across from Tom, who was kind enough to switch seats with us so that Jess would not get "train-sick." This sparked up a conversation between the three of us, and we ended up talking to him the entire ride to Florence. He is from London, but he has lived in Florence for about four years so he had tons of pointers to share including vacation suggestions, restaurants recommendations, and ways to eat on a budget. Apparently, there are places here where you can buy one drink and then eat from a buffet for free. He even told us about a job opportunity at his school where we could "model" for people who are in painting classes. FYI, we confirmed that we would be wearing clothing for these "modeling" jobs. We will see where this takes us! We quickly latched onto the idea of making friends in our new town and took down Tom's information. We even made plans to get together with him for a soccer game at the end of July.

We were both feeling really great about the way things were starting! On our way to the new apartment, we needed to kill some time so we grabbed a panini at a nearby cafe. We even busted out the UNO cards to stay awake while we waited to meet the apartment lady. We were having such a fun time when the owner of the cafe came over, pointed to the cards, and then gave us a stern "NO!." Apparently, Italians are not fans of playing card games at empty cafe tables! We decided to brush off the rudeness because we were so excited to meet Barbara, the apartment lady.

When we arrived there, Barbara showed us around the place and gave us all of the information we needed. She also informed us that we could not pay our rent through Paypal as originally planned. She needed us to get cash tonight so she could pay the landlord in the morning. We tried to persuade her to accept Paypal, but she was not budging. She clearly wanted us to deal with the hassle and incur the bank charges. :) We made several calls to Bank of America (thank God for Skype!), and we traveled to two different ATMs in an attempt to accomplish this task. During our ATM travels, we went to Coop (a local grocery store) to get groceries, and there we upset the clerk because we did not weigh and price our fruit on our own. She was not a happy camper when she realized that she needed to do this for us. What can we say, no one told us about this little trick! Luckily, we had some really nice locals behind us in line, and they nicely smiled and waited patiently. They even gave us some directions to another ATM! After almost four hours of dealing with the rent debacle, we were able to get cash out of an ATM, and we finally headed off to dinner where we enjoyed a margherita pizza and some gnocchi. This was a welcome treat after dealing with the rent situation.

It is now after midnight, and the time we have been awake is really adding up. We are both beyond delirious! We are now off to bed and hope to get a good 10 hours in before we start tomorrow's adventures. This will be a challenging task since, as Jess put it perfectly, "it is 90 degrees outside and about 107 degrees in our apartment." Did we mention that the apartment does not have air conditioning?! We will report back soon. Maybe we will have news of employment by then. We miss all of you! xoxo.