Tuscany, Italy – Friday, January 22nd to Sunday, January 24th
The first weekend in Italy after classes had commenced saw me take an excursion from Roma to Firenze, better known to the rest of the English-speaking world as Florence. While not as adventurous as many of my later travels, this ended up being one of my more fondly remembered tours if only because it was my first, as well as one of only two weekend trips that I would ever travel with other students during my five-and-a-half months in Europe. I ended up tagging along after finding out that our entire apartment floor planning a large group trip, and it seemed a good prospect for getting to know other people, even if I could already sense my quieter, philosophizing persona didn’t entirely harmonize with the actively socializing, partying dynamics from the rest of the apartment blocks. Getting there ended up being
a large part of the experience, not only did we realize we were running late for our train which required us to sprint down the furthest-reaching platform to reach it in time, but we didn’t validate our tickets. After discovering this, one of my roommates who was mostly proficient in Italian had a talk with the conductor, whereupon he soon suspected the conductor was gay, at which he added little flirts and a hug to get us a one-time write-in exception. A game of “never have I ever” developed in our cabin, which I won by a long margin for never once having committed any of the drug or sexual acts my slightly drunk traveling companions weren’t as innocent of, but took great pleasure in revealing the biggest shock of the night when I proudly stated, “never have I ever believed in a God.” Incidentally, many of the other students were from Notre Dame.
Upon arriving in Florence late that night and looking at the Duomo Cathedral, coldly illuminated in the January night sky, most of group couldn’t think of anything better to do other than shoot the breeze in the hostel or go out to a bar, which I elected to do the latter. And what does any college student do when in a foreign country where alcohol can be purchased by the
under-21s without even needing to show ID? That’s right, I ordered nothing and sat at the table where the few other quieter personalities found refuge, and a very nice conversation developed which was perfectly strained to be heard over the loud, thumping Italian pop music.
The next morning a few of us went to the Uffizi Gallery, an impressively large collection of classical renaissance artwork, although the mostly religious subject matter was of limiting interest to myself. Of course there was still much to admire; for example the statue on the right, “Laocoön and His Sons” by Pliny the Elder, we had made mention in my Philosophy of Art and Beauty class just a few days prior and I never would have expected to turn a corner and suddenly see it in person. 
Other important sights to take in included the Duomo Cathedral (in the stark white winter daylight) and the Ponte Vecchio, aka the Old Bridge, built over the Arno River, and supposedly set to be destroyed by the Nazis during the second world war until a direct order from Hitler saved it due to it being “too beautiful” to destroy. That my nose was flowing like the Niagara after a draft crept into our unheated hostel room the night before was partly responsible for my difficulty in seeing the same beautiful, romantic city everyone else knows Florence by, although admittedly the summer months are an infinitely better way to appreciate the red tile roofs than the short days winter. Thankfully it’s not cold enough for snow. Anyway, I will let this photo slide show tell the rest of the story.
The Galleria dell’Accademia was one of our later visits, which isn’t a huge museum by relative comparison to others in Firenze, but does house one notable work: Michelangelo’s David. While I might take a slightly cynical approach towards the tourist’s duties to see any work of art that someone else has deemed ‘famous’ or a ‘must-see’, there was a genuine impression of amazement upon seeing the larger-than-life nude figure.
That night we went to a delicatessen which offered an all-you-can-eat buffet deal aimed at student travelers. The next day we wandered some more, I bought a 2010 calendar featuring posters from many of my favorite Italian films, and got to help one of my roommates negotiate a semi-illegal deal with a street vendor
to buy a luxury Rolex wristwatch (assuredly stolen) down from €200 to €15. This was the same guy that hugged the gay train conductor to avoid getting penalties for traveling with non-validated tickets.
On our way back to Rome that afternoon, we again forgot to validate our train tickets, and the conductor this time around wasn’t so forgiving, although he offered to take €50 from our cabin’s group of seven and call it even. Despite that setback (and me accidentally leaving a box of pastries on the train) my personal share of expenses only totaled some €94.
Not too bad for an entire weekend in Firenze.
Comments