Monday June 14, 2004

Where to begin with the Italy trip... It was a complete disaster. I hate to say that because I feel very privileged to have gone in the first place, but it was awful. We had to pay around 60 euro for the whole thing, which was put together by some kind of activity center, not a real travel agency. We later found out that we were a guinea pig group for this activity center; meaning they'd never done this before and we were a test subject.

We left by bus at 3 am the night before. What fun that was. So to start this great trip off, we were on about 3, maybe 4 hours of sleep apiece. Actually, I think I didn't go to bed until after 1 am, so I was extra screwed. We were actually supposed to leave before 3 but a few late arrivals held us up. We took a bus about 45 minutes to the airport. We flew directly to Pisa, Italy from there.

Once in Italy, we got off the plane and sort of just stood around looking for our tour guide. He had left the airport and gone to a bus or train station to get a schedule. He eventually came back, though, and told us to buy train tickets. We did and immediately boarded an old train that had no one on it. We weren't even sure it was still operable. Seriously. It was, though. We took that train to Florence, Italy. It was about an hour train ride there, if I remember right, and we were packed in there. We were lucky enough to get to stand the whole time.

Once in Florence, our tour guide walked us out of the station and a few more blocks away to show us the green and white church (which you'll see later unless you cheated and looked at the pictures first). He briefly told us what it was, but it was pretty loud and I didn't hear anything. He then walked us around to the front door of it and showed us the large black door, which had row after row of little "scenes" sculpted into it. He briefly told us about this and a passerby spoke up and told us more about it than he did. The "scenes" were to be looked at left-to-right, top-to-bottom and they told a story or something like that. Anyway, it was news to even our dumbass tour guide.

From there, the tour guide basically told us we were on our own and that there were two trains going back to Pisa and to be sure to get on one or we'd be staying the night in Florence and missing our flight back home. This didn't sit well with anyone since we were being left to figure everything out for ourselves in a foreign country. You're not exactly comfortable in that situation. His "comforting" words in addition to that were, "Don't worry if you get lost, all you need is a credit card." That kind of pissed a lot of people off. That's not helpful to anyone at all. And it made those of us with no credit card that much more scared.

Then he ditched us, as any good tour guide does to his group. What a dick. Pretty much all there was to do in Florence was shop in the market area and see Michelangelo's David. I had completely forgotten about seeing David, and we spent the whole time shopping. I think we spent seven hours in Florence total. It was all shopping, too. And the girls wouldn't mind telling you the shopping sucked. If you'd seen about three or four of the stands, you had seen them all. They sold the same crap.

There were a lot of communist/USSR T-shirts being sold, though. Quite a bit of Ernesto "Che" Guevara T-shirts too. That was a lot of very, very "left" stuff to be selling in Italy, which I thought would be very "right," given their history and all.

Anyway, we ate at McDonalds while we were there. We ate at McDonalds in France too. I bet chains make a lot off of American travelers just because they're "familiar." We had a little snack at some cafe earlier in the day, but it was just a snack with a soda.

FINALLY, it was time to take the train back to Pisa and see the Leaning Tower. Once we got there, time seemed to fly by. We took a bus from the train station over to the Leaning Tower. We basically walked past it, stopped a restaurant a block or so away, ate, then it was time to go to the airport to go back home. It really sucked. The one thing there I really wanted to see and we did a walk-by.

Pretty much nothing to tell from there. We took a bus to the airport and flew back home. Oh, I believe we did fly over the Swiss Alps. You could only see them on the way there since it was night when we flew back, but it was cool. That's about all I can remember. In a nutshell: the tour guide couldn't have been worse, we walked around for like seven hours on virtually no sleep, then we flew home. Not fun.

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