Florence

The past weekend (about 8-9 days ago) several other students and I travelled to Florence for a couple nights. This was my first time going to Italy. This was one country that never really sparked my interest like other European countries. I’m not really sure what the reason for this lack of interest is. I have Italian heritage and I certainly love the food. Anyways, it just ended up being one of those “why not go?” situations like St. Malo earlier in the semester, and like I was with that trip, I was equally pleased with this one.

I was pleasantly surprised by how charming the city and the people were. Our group had arrived around 10:30 pm in the train station and had to find the hostel quickly because we were expected at a certain time. We had walked in circles for a bit because we were sent in the wrong direction when we asked a shop owner for help. It wasn’t long before someone who looked like they were waiting for a bus offered help and we were soon in the right direction. It was at that time that we decided to call the hostel to say that we were going to be late. During the call, the hostel owner asked where we were and she came out to find us on the street! She was a hysterical little Italian woman who was happy to find us. She was very welcoming and friendly. Before even checking us in, she gave us maps and briefed us on where to go and where not to go for food and for sightseeing, and was just overall overly genial. In just those first hours of being in Florence, I felt like the city, if not the country, was always smiling and content.

Otherwise, it ended up being a typical “travelling outside of Strasbourg” type of weekend, and that’s certainly something that I appreciate. The only other quirk of the trip would have been buying mandatory reservations for seats on Italian trains and then having to sit on the floor because those seats did not exist. However, at any point, I think all of us on the trip were just happy to be going from point A to point B.

-Maria