Once Mom finally calmed her nerves enough to let me go through security to hop aboard my flight I couldn't contain my excitement, in T- minus 10 hours give or take a few I would be in Florence, in an apartment and starting what will be my most amazing summer ever. Let's just say it didn't exactly work out that way...
At first it all seemed to be going great, we boarded the plane and everything was running ahead of schedule, I saw my bright purple suitcase get loaded into the cargo hold and I had just settled in and grabbed my pillow when the pilot clicked on the intercom and told us there was some technology problem with our plane and they were trying to figure it all out before we could take off.
It was at that moment the guy sitting behind me said, "Just watch, were going to have to get off."
About five minutes later he was right.
My first flight was into Rome and like me most of the people on my flight had connections to other places, the sarcastic lady sitting next to me had connection to Sicily for a vacation with her husband and there were at least 15 people with a connection to Florence, just like me.
We were going to miss our connection, it's departure time was an hour from when we were supposed to arrive in Rome and now none of us had any idea when we were going to get there.
The airline had to find us another plane, have it go through all the necessary security checks, move all of our luggage and all of the catering for our international flight before we could board we boarded our new plane around 7pm and didn't take off until at least 8 o'clock at that point I was already supposed to be in the air for almost 2 hours and we were just now taking off.
The airline couldn't tell me anything about rebooking a connection and told me to ask the people in Rome, I can't say I was to thrilled about having to deal with this entire situation oversees in a country where I didn't speak the language but I tried to keep calm, get some rest and just deal with it later.
We arrived in Rome with quite a bumpy start. The turbulance was so rough during our landing that our supposedly safer plane broke...
But no one was hurt and we all got off the plane safely so that was wonderful now our only issue was that none of us had any idea what we were going to do to get to Florence from Rome. We made it through customs and waited around for our luggage for what felt like forever, at this point there was a group of 13 of us all in the same situation, all attending Florence University of the Arts, and all stuck in Rome.
There were no more connecting flights that day from Rome to Florence so for a while we were basically out of luck. Were told the best way to get there would be by train but first we had to get our baggage.
We talked to someone who told us our luggage would be in the lost baggage area so we walked a while to the other side of the airport to attempt to find our luggage only to find out that the person we originally talked to was misinformed and our luggage was just running behind so we had to go all the way back, which was an issue within itself because there isn't really a way to go back to baggage claim without going back through security, so we had to find another person who could let us in the staff way and that took a while, the whole ordeal was just turning into a huge mess.
After being in the airport for an extra 3 hours we finally got our baggage and headed up to take a train to Florence but between all the stress and everything else by the time we went to buy tickets people were arguing over which train to take and how much money it was, they were complaining about how tired they were and at that point I just tried to stay out of it.
I was basically to the point where all I wanted was to get to Florence and go to bed.
After paying 60 Euro for a train we finally made it to Florence and took a taxi to the university to get our apartment keys BUT, they didn't have our apartment keys, NO OUR keys were at the airport where they were expecting us to be EVEN THOUGH I emailed the university as soon as I found out I wouldn't be arriving at the airport.
SO we had to wait around ANOTHER hour after having waited around ALL DAY.
Finally we got our apartment keys, met the rest of our roommates, tried to get settled in because its not like we'd eaten anything since the plane food.
My roommates and I found a pizza place, got some pizza, ate some gelato and I was down for the count, I was exhausted!
Overall I just never ever want to go through that again.
I was virtually by myself, traveling to a different country where I don't know the language AT ALL and with a bunch of strangers. We were connected through our troubles and I don't know what I would have done without everyone but it was WAY too crazy for my first day in Italy so lets not ever have to deal with it again.
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Today was much better, I'm making wonderful friends with my roommates, we had orientation today so I found out where all of my classes are, We ate lunch at a really cute Italian restaurant, took touristy pictures around the city and just overall had a good day.
Our refrigerator isn't working yet but hopefully that will be fixed soon and my class starts tomorrow I can't wait!
The first day may not have been the best but at this point it can only get better, in fact it already has I just booked my tickets to Spain for this weekend! I'm going with my roommate Rachel to Barcelona and it's going to be amazing. We've already planned the Cheetah Girls scene we will attempt to reenact (LOL) I'm sure that'll be amusing.
STAY TUNED: There is honestly so much more I could've said but this was long already and I think I've ranted quite enough. Florence is beautiful and as posts continue you'll definitely get to know more about the city, my trip, my roommates and SO SO MUCH more so stay tuned!
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