Italia 2011: Friends in Italy... Part Three

Pizza from O'Vesuvio

Very tired. This will be brief.

PIzza the other night was awesome. Outdoor club was closed for the season, which was devastating, so we went to an indoor place called Space instead. Had lots of fun.... but not as much as we could have. One of my Pisa friends, Mike, came down to join us which was nice.

Yesterday we took the train to Siena and strolled around the beautiful city, making frequent stops in stores. I bought a fantastic sweater (see picture below. We had really good gourmet gelato from a place called Grom. We relaxed with a drink on the patio of the Irish pub, and all of a sudden I heard my name and turned around to see my friend and ex-student Stephanie. She's in Siena with the U of T study abroad program.

We got back to Florence, and Stacey opted to stay in for the night to get some much-needed rest. I thumb my nose at sleep. Tamara and I went out. We joined a pub crawl because one of the crawl guides, Matt, had given us a flyer the day before and we figured it sounded actually pretty good. For 18 euros we got an hour of open bar, a free shot at 4 bars afterwards, and entrance to Space. We had an absolute blast and met some cool people, including a group of aerospace engineering students from France. One of them is from Avignon. We had a long conversation about the bridge. Apparently it's underwhelming and in need of repair.

Things got dramatic when one of the French guys found out that a friend from home had committed suicide. There was lots of crying and consoling. We felt terrible for him, but I also felt bad for Matt as it was his first time being in charge of the crawl on his own, and this was quite a disastrous thing to have to deal with. I helped convince the french guys that their friend needed to go home and sleep. Once that downer was rectified, the night continued and we had an awesome time. Also, I've mentioned how I have run into my Turkish friend, Emre, on two separate occasions in Florence. Guess who tapped me on the shoulder last night...

Today the girls and I had a hardcore shopping day. It was successful. Got a gorgeous studded tuscan buffalo-leather collar for my dog, an awesome multi-functional schoolbag/laptop-tote for myself, and some cool clothes too. The second suitcase I bought the other day is pretty full...

Need 20 minute nap before we head out now for another night on the town. Tomorrow we catch the train at 8:30am for Milan (we couldn't go to Venice for the day as planned since the trains were sold out. It's probably for the best...).

Ciao