Firenze

Firenze is far too hot. The place I've been staying at has these terrible tents which really retain the heat in the morning in a terrible terrible way.

My first meal in Florence was at a McDonalds and I have not yet gotten a chance to really go out for dinner.

And my four friends from Wales that I'd been traveling with left our company last night, and me and the two Australian guys I'm also with walked them to the train station and didn't get back from saying our goodbyes until 5:30 in the morning. That was pretty exhausting, but we ended up passing the David right at sunrise, which is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

On the way from Siena we passed through a medieval village and climbed a castle, and tonight we have a restaurant and gelateria lined up to get a true Tuscan dining experience.

Tomorrow we'll head out for Venice, and after that the Aussies are going to Amsterdam then Paris then arriving in Barcelona about when I intended to. Doing some looking into it, I'm realizing that going to Turkey is probably a lot more expensive and inconvenient than I'd thought, so I'm considering just staying along with them for a while longer since I'd end up where I needed to be anyway. I need to talk to my Turkish friends though... I feel a little bad because I definitely am interested in Istanbul, but I suppose the real truth here is that it's my vacation so I can do what I want :P

The internet where we're staying in Florence is very cheap (1 euro for 12 hours) but there are only a half dozen plugs across the entire place which makes it pretty hard to keep everything charged. I've just finished charging everything though so hopefully that'll keep me set for a while.

The gelato is great. Meeting friends has been great, and I've had some great conversations. Enough so that I've used up all my big words for now (!!!!) and I'll have to come back when I've got some mathematics to talk about or something.