We made it! Greetings from Florence!

Once goodbyes were said, bags were packed, and copious amounts of advice was given, it was finally time to get this adventure started!  I got through checking in and a slow security line only to have a solid 2 hours left before my flight departed.  (Thanks for getting me to the airport 2.5 hours early, Dad...)  Anyways, once that was taken care of, I needed a latte.  A huge iced soy hazelnut latte from Peets.  Little did I know that my craving would be my last purchase in the US and $7 at that..  Oh well.  Once that was taken care of, I started seeing familiar faces as we all waited for our flight from SFO to Frankfurt, Germany.  I had a nice, little aisle seat for a lovely 10ish hour flight.  Thank goodness for in flight movies and a perfectly timed present of The Office on DVD.  Without a minute of sleep on the plane, I wasn't a happy camper, but I got over it pretty fast because once we landed in Frankfurt, we got the cheapest beer and panini we could find.  Bear it mind it was 11 am there and 2 in California, but we weren't too worried about it.  When in Frankfurt..

The flight to Frankfurt was awesome. Germans are so nice- they waited a solid half hour for some people who had been delayed to get onto the flight.  I sat next to a guy on my program and around 4 other students abroad.  The people across from me were fresh off a plane from New Jersey and Florence bound as well.  Michael was heading to Siena and she was staying in Florence.  The girl behind me was a Stanford student studying in Florence and hoping to intern at a bakery in the city.  We all bonded and chit chatted for the entire flight.  After exchanging names so we could become Facebook friends, we all said our good byes and hope to meet up during sometime this semester!  It was a clear afternoon as we were landing in Florence and it was beautiful.  We flew over huge tuscan villas and estates and we were all in awe as we got our first glimpse of the Duomo (oh and a massive IKEA).

Luckily all of the bags were there and our taxi drivers got us to our pensione.  Too bad we didn't know where it was.  After being dropped off in front of the building next to ours, we proceeded to walk about 2 blocks in the opposite direction from our place with 6 massive pieces of luggage plus our carry-ons. We finally found our building and then we struggled to take all of the luggage up the stairs...

 Once we got into our pensione, Gallo d'Oro, we got situated, had an absolutely delicious homemade Italian dinner and called it a night at about 8:30 despite our ambitious plans to get gelato with our friends.