Whilrwind Week

 Monday:
Had class until 6:30PM like every Monday. The day went by pretty slow, yet fast? I know, doesn't make sense. Class went by really slowly, but the day zoomed by. Didn't do much after dinner, except homework.

Tuesday:
Again, had class until 12:45. Or was suppose to anyways. When I got to Intro to Florence at 11:45, Erin was waiting outside the classroom and talked me into skipping. Of course I said yes, and so instead of wasting an hour of our life doing nothing in class, we enjoyed the beautiful weather outside. We took our laundry to the tourist laundry place we use and then headed to the market.
We entered the building at a different entrance this time. We ran into the fish market, which we didn't even know existed. It smelled like Pike Place, home sweet home. Since we had the time, we wandered up and down every aisle. In the corner was this little bakery that had all sorts of goodies. In particular, they had this mini whoopie pie/cake pops. One being a lemon poppyside with lemon frosting and the other being a strawberry and chocolate frosting one. They were delicious! We vowed there and then not to share this secret discovery with any one else. Before we left we got some dried fruit for the weekend. I had to give my bag to Erin so I wouldn't eat any of it...
After lunch I got some homework done. And Erin and I went shopping down past the duomo. We gave ourselves only an hour so we could get back and do homework. I had plans later in the evening to work on my Holocaust presentation with Carl, but as we were walking Erin reminded me we had made plans with our Italian friends for tonight as well. It didn't look like I was going to be able to make it... and the other girls weren't really feeling up to it so Erin was a little bummed that we would probably have to cancel.
After dinner I went to the library to get some work done. While there I decided that it was worth going out with the guys, and that Carl and I would work on our presentation until 10PM and then I would leave. I mean, come on, Tuesday IS the night everyone does something fun!
So, after dinner and studying, Erin and I headed out to meet the boys. We went to the Red Garter again (the karaoke bar) and had a blast. Some of the guys we live with showed up halfway through the night too. We both seemed to forget we had a tour for Intro to Florence at 8:30AM and an Italian quiz... by the time we got home at 2AM we passed out.

Wednesday:
Somehow I managed to get myself out of bed and ready for the tour by 8:30AM. Not entirely sure how, but I'm going to attribute it to my young person bounce-back abilities.
The tour wasn't as interesting as last weeks, but still nowhere near as dull as the first.
My Italian quiz went off without a hitch. After, I could only think of one question I knew I had missed... good sign.
We went and got our laundry after class, and took a nap until lunch.
After lunch I had my Holocaust history class. I don't know why, but it seemed to drag on even longer than usual.
Once class was finished I went home and packed for London. We weren't leaving until 6:30 for the train, but I had nothing else better to do. I basically did nothing from 3:30 until 6:30, which was nice.
Getting our train ticket to the Pisa airport wasn't too bad. Except that there was no train going straight to the airport. We had to get off at Pisa Centrale and take a 4 minute cab.
We were running a little late, but we got through security and our passport checks with like 10 minutes to spare. Talk about cutting it close. Erin and I sat next to each other on the plane, and both fell alseep the minute the plane took off. We landed in London close to midnight and expected it to be an easy exit out of the airport. Oh no.
We had to stand in line for almost an hour and a half at customs. It was beyond ridiculous. THEN when we did finally get up to a counter, Gabby and Audrey had to act like complete idiots almost getting us sent to the back of line.
Since we hadn't expected customs to exist, or even take as long as it did, we had missed the last train to Greenwich. Some random guy saw we were struggling and told us the best/cheapest way to get to our hostel. So we boarded a bus, took it about 30 minutes, then had to take a cab the other 20 minutes. Thank goodness there was 6 of us so nobody had to pay too much of the bill.
We finally got to our hostel at 3AM... two hours after we had said we would be getting in. Lucky for us the owner had stayed up to let us in. He politely reminded us of this fact as he checked us in. Erin, Audrey and I roomed together in the 9 person dorm, while the other 3 were in the 8 person dorm. We said goodnight and passed out the minute our head it the pillow.

Welcome to London.


Monday, October 10th - Wednesday, October 12th