Aha. Found the floppy. Now to make my account of the trip actually readable... (it was written in the evenings, you see)
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Day 1 (right after lunch)
After a long boring car trip, we finally get to Florence. The place we are staying at is not in Florence, but outside Florence, in Sesto Fiorentino (a nearby town). So we go to Sesto Fiorentino... first surprise, there’s about 1.5km of rough road to get where we will be staying. Ohwell... off we go. The road is small small small, and difficult to get on with our car. We finally get to the place... really nice, I have to admit, it’s a really old watchtower (dating back to the year 900, and a national monument). Brief moment of panic... will our rooms have electricity? (heheh) They do. \o/ And they’re really quite nice, too. Old furniture, and all... very nice. The scenery is awfully nice as well, lots of flowers and trees and stuff... I’ll have to take some photos when I can get my camera to work. Heh. Apparently the batteries are out on the thing... I hope that when we get new batteries it works, I don’t want to have to rely on those shitty one-use cameras for my photos. I hate those.
This afternoon we’re going to visit the Santa Maria Novella church... we’re leaving as soon as I’m finished typing this. I hope we’ll find somewhere to eat, too... I’m starving, and munching on a cookie right now just to stop my stomach from rumbling noisily.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention... lots of olive trees around this place. I’m allergic to olive trees, the pollen to be specific. Let’s hope it’s not pollen season yet... otherwise, I’m in for a few days of sneezing.
My parents’ room is nicer than mine. Not fair. :p Nice smell in this room, though. The smell of... well, I dunno how to describe it... smell of old things, perhaps. Pleasant smell.
I hope the dog outside will stop barking when it’s night, or I won’t be able to sleep... heh, there’s three dogs here. Two of which are larger than I am... brief moment of panic when I realized that, but then the owners of the place reassured us that the dogs are really quite mellow - not to mention old - so they will not be doing anything. :p Yay. If there’s something I really would not enjoy, it’s getting pounced by a dog that’s larger than me.
(after dinner)
So we went down to Florence with the bus... there’s something ominous about taking a bus in front of the graveyard, heh. I’ve read at least five different horror stories that have something to do with that. At any rate, while we were on the bus, my mom told me an interesting thing... the name of this town, Sesto Fiorentino (“sixth of Florence”) comes from the fact that it’s exactly 6 roman miles (whatever those are... I’ll have to check when I get back home) from the center of Florence.
When we got to Florence, we had lunch (McDonald’s... bleh), then off we went to visit churches and stuff. First we went to Santa Maria Novella, which is a beautiful church both on the outside and on the inside. The stained glass windows especially are incredible... I took some photos of the light that was reflected through them and on the floor, I hope they turned out okay.
There was a grave inside the church, which I found interesting because of what was written on it... a certain “Septimia puella ornatissima” (“Settimia, extremely beautiful girl”) was buried there. This girl was apparently very smart and educated (“virile ingenium”, heh... basically it says she had the brain of a man). She died when she was 22, while she was being operated on (as the text says, and as the image on the grave shows), probably because of appendicitis. Heh. Just found that interesting...
We then moved on to two other churches (San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Del Fiore), but we couldn’t visit them because it was too late, so we just looked at them from the outside, we will go back tomorrow. I bought some postcards for my friends (and one that was more than a simple postcard, heh heh heh... I have the feeling I’ll get throttled when that arrives...), then we headed back to the bus stop (because everybody was complaining that their feet hurt). Heh, I’m such a sucker for books. We were walking, and my mom went, “hey look, that’s a huge bookshop...” My reaction: “Where? Oooh... I see it... can we go there? Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?” :D And we bought some books. \o/ And tomorrow we’ll be going to another bookshop, this one with books in English. \o/
Oh yes, dinner... bread and salami and ham and cheese. We couldn’t be bothered to look for a restaurant, so we bought some groceries and ate them in our room.
Then we played scala quaranta (Italian card game... *goes for the dictionary* nope, not there... I'll have to explain it if I can be bothered) afterwards, and I typed this, and now I’m going to bed.
Day 2 (after dinner)
Ow, my feet. Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow.
Let’s start from the beginning. Slept fairly well this night, though I had a very odd dream which I think was in the middle of the night, so I kept waking up and rolling over.
After we woke up this morning, we went to visit the San Lorenzo church, which was really quite nice inside, if a bit bland. Then we went to the Feltrinelli International bookshop, the one I was talking about yesterday, with the books in English. I have to admit I’m impressed with my mom’s courage. She agreed to go there, even if she knew exactly what would happen - me coming out of the shop with a large stack of books. And so it was... I got seven books, five of which are some of the Pern books I was missing. \o/ I wanted to buy more, but 1. my mom was frowning, and 2. I didn’t want to lug five bags of books through Florence for all the afternoon. Two bags of books were cumbersome enough.
Anyway, after we went to the bookshop, we went and visited the Santa Maria Del Fiore church. That church is beautiful outside, but really, really, really drab on the inside. Bleh. Then I wrote the postcards I’d bought yesterday, we had lunch, then went down to Piazza della Signoria and visited Palazzo Vecchio. After that, we visited the Historical Science Museum, then headed back here.
Dinner was a normal dinner, ham, salad, cheese, salami, olives, bread, and a small cake.
Then we played scala quaranta again, and now here I am.
Day 3 (after dinner)
I’ll be short, because I’m tired and cold and want to go to sleep. We visited the Santa Croce church today, then had lunch, then had a walk down Ponte Vecchio, then took a bus back to Sesto Fiorentino and spent the afternoon relaxing. Had dinner, played machiavelli (a variant of scala quaranta which really forces you to think), and now I’m going to lie down and hopefully sleep. Tomorrow we’re going to visit the Uffizi museum, will be tiring. Great (always wanted to go there), but tiring. And then on Monday morning we’re leaving to go home. w00t. \o/ We should be home in the early afternoon.
Oh, and I bought a small money pouch to keep my euro coins. They were starting to get cumbersome in my wallet.
God, I’m so tired that my eyes can’t focus on the screen properly and my hands are so cold I can’t even type properly. I’m going to sleep, like, right now. I don’t care if it’s 9pm. I wanted to go to sleep an hour ago, but due to my stubborness, didn’t. Serves me right.
Well, I’ve learned something at least. Never ever ever use my brain to do something of the machiavelli sort when my body’s already tired. If I do, my body and my brain coalize against me, say “goodnight, we’re going to bed”, and shut off. Guh.
Day 4 (after dinner)
Florence was so absurdly full of policemen today it had to be seen to be believed. There was risk of terrorism, you see, so there was a policeman at every street corner. On our way to the Duomo (which is on the way to the Uffizi museum), we were stopped and searched, as was everybody else. It felt odd, seeing so many policemen - armed policemen - around... I felt extremely nervous, but very safe at the same time. At any rate, we got to the Uffizi, and found that dailight savings time started today - so we were 30 minutes late on our booking because we did not know. Brief moment of panic, but they let us in anyway. The paintings and all were very nice... I couldn’t take photos of course, and I didn’t waste my money on postcards either. My parents did get me a nice ocarina after we came out of the Uffizi though, and my brother got one as well. I have the feeling they’re regretting it now, all we do is play the things. \o/
At any rate, after a couple games of machiavelli, I’m just about ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow we go home, finally.
Not that I mind being here, but I miss my friends, and my home too. I’ve just about had it with this place we’re staying at. For some reason I don’t sleep well in this bed, I wake up at least four times per night. Plus there’s a dog barking often, and it’s a pain in the ass. Plus it takes 15 minutes for the water to get warm (the water’s from a spring next to here) so it’s a pain to wash my face in the morning, simply because we don’t have enough time to wait for the water to get hot. Plus the room is cold 95% of the time, because the heating system is, uh, wood-driven so to speak (the owner of the place stuffs logs into a big fire, the fire heats water, the water heats the rooms, or so I’ve heard), so it doesn’t get turned on before late evening. Brrrrr.
But now I can say I’ve lived for four days in a National Monument. Heh.
(Oh yeah, and another thing this trip has proven: I can’t live without music.)
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I suck at writing diaries, as you've probably noticed. ^^; Kinda sad though, there's so much I want to say during a day, and I forget most of it when it's evening.
Oh yeah... I took some 70 photos there. I'll post some when they're developed.