Firenze, Glorious Firenze|

Hello to all!! After an insane travelling ordeal we arrived safe and sound sunday night at midnight in Firenze. Let me rewind and briefly review my flight and trains and bus itinerary. Ok. So we begin in montreal, I fly montreal toronto, so far so good. Toronto to Heathrow, also so far so good, except of course for the 5 hour time change which meant that breakfast and dinner were served about an hour apart :S Arrive at heathrow and bus to oxford, I got there fairly quickly, in about an hour, an hour and a half. Then once there hired a cab to take me and the luggage to this storage place where i put my stuff. Granted Im kind of worried about it being stolen, but still, i mean it looks safe and why weep about broken eggs before theyre broken. The place looks ok enough, everything is on closed circuit camera like everywhere in England so theft is pretty rare. After the cabbie brought me back to the bus station I had to nab a bus to Stansted where I was meeting patrick and his sister. It was an ok ride, but I was exhausted, having only gotten about an hours sleep on the plane. The bus was tough to sleep on too since it was traffic like youve never seen traffic before (crazy british highways). Anywhee, once at Stansted I met with Pat and his sister and we waited for our flight (for 2 hours). We then hopped on our Ryanair plane (which I was fairly impressed with by the by) and flew to Pisa. 2 hours later, we got there and had to hop a shady looking train with gypsies coming on and off to get to Florence. We got to Florence ok, and had to call the Hostel woman to be let in. But wow, the room is beautiful. High ceilings, private bathroom, air conditioning. Beds are so so, but other than that, the place looks really great and is so close to everything. Monday we walked like madpeople all through the city, saw a lot of the sights, and I supplemented the walk with the little bits i pretend to know about the Italian renaissance (thank you Prof. Krantz). We were exhausted by mid afternoon so we headed back and napped for a little (its quite hot here during the day). The everning was very nice though, we had some wine on the Ponte Vecchio and met this guy from Vancouver who gave us the lowdown on Gypsies. Oh and Pat and Katherine broke Pats camera by dropping it, but thats just a detail... Today we got up earlyish, paid uproariously much for breakfast (6 € for a juice, espresso and pastry) and started to walk again. We visited the Duomo and climbed the cupola )483 steps of solid stone (yes its hard on the knees). But the sight above was incredbile. When I can Ill upload some pictures. We saw inside the church too and were thoroughly impressed. Then we crossed the arno to where we are now in the Oltrarno. We went to visit San Spirito but the church was closed for a few hours so we had lunch. Now lunch deserves a paragraph in and of itself. Oh madre de Dios it was good. Not too pricey 13€, but amazing food at this little hole in the wall trattoria. We all were really sated afterwards and wanted to go to the Boboli gardens but they were closed. So now we're at an internet cafe and catching up on some correspondence. Soon we'll be off to Santa Felicita to see Pontormo's deposition then San Spirito and Maybe Santa Maria del Carmine for the Brancacci chapel. Tonigth is anyone's guess. Needless to say i'm having a wonderful time here. I miss everyone back home. Hope all the second cuppers are doing well and that the new summer drinks are blasting off the blenders. Zachary I got your phone call but wasnt going to answer it since its waaaaay too expensive for me to call people on my phone here. If you want you can email me or text message me anytime. Lisa, you know that I love you and miss you immensely. Heather, if we get into Santo Spirito I will definitely rub the porcino for you. Mom, Dad, Ariane and Allegra and Hershey take care of yourselves, dont let the bird take over the house. Thats all for now folks, expect another update in a few days!!!