Buon giorno Italia!

Photos: My first Italian cappuchino - frothy goodness!; Basking in front of the Santa Maria Novella; Watching the sunset on the Porta Vecchio

It's a rainy Sunday night, and after a busy 3 days, Frances and I are chilling out in her room; as she's busy being an artist finishing up a painting project, I decided to document some of my Italian dream...I'll do it in a series of blogs so I don't leave too much out. **Frances, for those of you who don't know, is an Alabama girl I worked w/ this summer on the ranch. She's a kindred spirit.**

Friday, I got up at 4.00 am to catch a bus to another bus to Stanstead Airport to Pisa. In Pisa I had one of my smoothest travel transitions: within 10 minutes of stepping off the plain, I was in a train to Florence. My eyes wouldn't let my body fall asleep; I was in Italy!!! This was verified by the tiny towns nestled into the hilly countryside zooming by and signs I couldn't read everywhere.

At the train station, I checked in my (Pam's) luggage and hit the streets with one simple goal: gelato! My navigational skills were put to the test like never before: not only were the streets smaller and more twisted than those in London, I knew little to none of the language and I didn't have a map (yet). However, 5 minutes later, I had a cup of gelato large enough to feed Iowa and was sitting on the steps of the San Lorenzo chapel.

I was feeling okay at this point, until I pulled out my phone to try to call Frances and realized that it wouldn't work outside of London. This is where you learn something about what kind of traveler you are: 5 hours of sleep, no concept of where you are in a totally new city, not knowing the language and unable to contact the one person you know within thousands of miles. I stifled the panic and hit the streets in search of a solution. I weaved through the leather markets (which smelled distinctly Italian), spotted a phone store which directed me to another store where, for one euro, I was able to call Frances and agree on a meeting place.

That dilemma being solved, I bought a map from a wrinkled old man who gave me a brief Italian lesson who also directed me to my final destination. My goodness, at this point it will take too many words to try to describe what it's like walking through the streets of your first Italian town: gelatarios every other shop, itty bitty streets, people on motorcycles...all the stereotypical stuff you would imagine. And then I turned a cornere and before me was, duh duh dun: THE DUOMO! In all it's splendor, just like I'd seen countless pictures in my architecture classes. It relieved me of all my traveler stress and fatigue. My jaw just droppend and my insides filled up with contentment.

Two hours later Frances found me dozing w/ my journal open on my lap on the backside of the Fountain of Neptune. Seeing her was goodness beyond words :) She took me around Florence, and just being with a familiar person, not to mention my dream city, was even better than gelato.

After a few hours in Florence, we took a train to Sienna where she lives, picked up a pizza on the way, and devoured it at her apartment. We talked for a few hours about things only kindred spirits can discuss, then passed out. It was a blissful first day.