day 10.

ciao bella from Cortona, Italy!

if you don’t know where Cortona is - it’s in Tuscany...and not to far from the house where Under the Tuscan Sun was filmed. yay!

today was one of the happiest, hilarious, and most adrenaline filled days i have had...ha. i met up with Michaele in Florence (after i successfully took a water boat and train) and it was AWESOME. she was waiting with a sign that says “Lafawnduh” like the one in Napoleon Dynamite. (literally, i died laughing..) Florence was gorgeous and really fun...and it was so nice to spend the day with Mike! as for the adrenaline part...we were leaving Cortona and only had 5 minutes to make our train (so we thought..) and ended up running to the train (which wasn’t the right one), hopped on, showed the lady our ticket (before it started moving) and she tried to open the train door (which was now locked) to let us off the train. unfortunately, there was NO WAY to stop the train (that was headed all the way to Rome), so we put on our sad faces while an attractive older Italian train fellow told us how to get back to Cortona after we got into Rome.

let me just put it this way...Michaele and i rode first class not once, but TWICE...and basically hopped three trains (with adrenaline going and God watching out for us) in the course of about 5 hours.......all for 7 euros! haha (technically, we could have been charged 50 euros just for not having the proper ticket..)

did i mention we were waiting to get to Cortona for dinner?? haha...we had to settle for McDonalds at the train station.

there’s actually a bit more to the story, but luckily we were greeted by 3 lovely people (Ashley, Erin, and Jacob) from Mike’s school who drove us up from the train station and into Cortona at 12:30 in the morning....did i also mention that i am staying at a convent that has nuns who speak zero english? this is a fun time :)

i have realized that my “stuff i learned today” section is just random information, so here’s some more of it:

1. i sat across from a guy for a bit on the train today who disliked Venice as much as i did :) he said he loved Florence, though. (he was American and he was pretty awesome)

2. an Italian woman kept talking to me on the train, despite knowing that I didn’t understand her AND had headphones in (she was also super loud...)

3. scratch that - ALL Italians are super loud

4. i’m a pretty unprepared traveler :/

5. there’s a lot of graffiti along the walls during the train ride...who knew?

6. if you want a good deal and great food, go to the Italian restaurants that don’t have any English menus in the windows...

7. Florence is amazing...and the marketplace is really cheap and there’s cool stuff

8. Florence is also known for their leather...

9. i saw the David statue today...that thing is SO tall and really cool. Michaelangelo just straight up made is out of the some marble that noone was using, and even today noone knows how he did....it was very detailed, even down to the veins in his hand

10. Michaelangelo was a gangster. he did EVERYTHING. (i also got to see the gold doors on a building that he used to sit in front of and sketch pictures from, and now that same building has HIS working inside....insane.)

i took some photos in Florence closer to sunset, so here you go...