Vagabond or Bust

Wow, I completely forgot to mention my weekend trip to Florence, Italy last week.  And ironically enough, I will never forget this trip as it has officially become the most ridiculous weekend of my life, hands down, feet down, “man down.”  

To kick off this adventure, Chris, Caitlin, and myself left for the train station six hours before our scheduled train departure at 10:45 pm.  You may be asking yourself, “why Brendan?” Well, as I have previously mentioned (and will inevitably complain about in the future), Italian transportation is an incredibly large joke.  I thought Delta was bad, but boy, was I proven wrong.  There is this thing here in Europe where workers just go in strike whenever they feel like it: “I think I want a longer lunch break, STRIKE!” “Man that company party last night got weird, STRIKE!” “When in Rome…STRIKE!” Ok, there is a real reason, but it’s more fun to pretend like Europeans are lazier than Americans. Anyways, there was a planned strike for our departure date.  After getting on the wrong bus and taking two hours to make a 30 minute walk to the station, we made it to Termini five minutes before the last train left for the night.  Unfortunately, we had to leave our fellow travelers in Rome to catch the next train in the morning as they hadn’t even left Trastevere yet.  Lucky them…

We arrived in Florence determined to blindly find our hostel and immediately seek out food.  After a while of wandering (and an unplanned run-in with Ilana Wolstein) we decided to take the second option of directions given to us by a bunch of literal stoop kids.  Side note: the first option was to follow a dark alley to a dead end.  We found the hostel and well, um, huh…let me explain it this way.  You know in horror movies when the ditsy blonde walks into the dark cellar and everyone is yelling at the screen about how dumb she is and how she completely deserved that chainsaw to the abdomen? Yeah, well, we were that proverbial blonde.  We walked in the doors, up seven flights of stairs in the pitch black, and were greeted by two men whom we immediately coined “crackhead” and “crazy eyes.” 

At this point, we unanimously decided that the only possible way to stay at Hostel the night was to go out and drink enough to lose all inhibitions, and subsequently, survival instincts.  In this endeavor, great success. In life decisions, huge fail.  But hey, it was only 10 euros per night and I’m poor.  So, we went out to Red Garter with Chris’ friend from Clemson and slept like little prisoner babies that night.  The next morning we woke up and left instantly to meet up with our other friends who had taken the 6:45 am train in.  We succumbed to the lure of McDonalds breakfast and postponed all lures of a shower and change of clothes at the hostel.  But rolling ten people

nothing to you, then well, open a book.  After, we went to see the Michelangelo’s David. This brings up a quick point that I would like to make.  The David is not special nor is it cool.  In fact The David Letterman > The David.  The David Fullmer > The David.  And dare I say? The David Hasselhoff  > The David.  Yeah, that’s how I feel about this guy whose hands and head are disproportionate to his body and cost 15 euro 

deep, we decided that no crackhead or crazy eyed Italian could overcome us (again, probably not the best logic).  Anyways, we rallied and did a lot of the tourist attractions including the Duomo and Duomo Capula. While Rome is a 

far superior city to Florence, the view from the Duomo rivals that of the Vatican.  Florence is honestly breathtaking from the top of the Duomo; and not because of its altitude, but the uniformity and structure of the city’s buildings and streets.  Pictures may speak 1,000 words, but seeing this in person requires none.  Moving on, we visited the Uffizi Museum, which is very famous for its arrayed art collection.  The gallery houses everything from Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Annunciation to Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus to Raphael’s Madonna of 

the Goldfinch.  If these mean 

to go see. Spend your money on something important to the world, like beer or pizza.  The girls proceeded to go leather shopping (cause I guess that’s famous in Florence) while Chris, Alex, and myself scoured the local market for a place to spend our money on something important to the world.  After a nice midday break, we made fools of ourselves back at the leather store by creating puppets out of mink scarves.  And so, the birth of Master Scarf and Monsieur Lerow came to be. 

Ok, just one more… The Any Homeless Man Named David > The David.

Being poor college students, we barely eat and spend our money on other…vices.  But in Florence, we got our money’s worth spending 15 euro on a 4 course meal with all you can drink wine and a bar crawl after…best of both worlds.  Those worlds being keeping yourself alive, the former, and slowly killing yourself, the latter.  I left my Rome friends for a while to meet up with Ryan Cristal and Natasha Volny, my buds from Vandy, and also ran into a bunch of other Commodores.  It’s definitely nice to see some familiar faces for a change, because I usually have to rely on coincidence to see Paige (called out).  We ended up at a club called Space and that’s where this chapter needs to end.  

At our hostel, we needed to be up and out by 9:30 every morning for cleaning until 4 pm.  While we initially found this to be a relief from the griminess of the actual people there, we learned the truth shortly after leaving Florence.  Instead of sanitizing and cleaning, the Firenze police were more concerned about the drugs that crackhead and crazy eyes were supposedly cooking in the kitchen.  So we needed to be out the next morning at 9:30 am after getting back at 5 am in the morning.  Rough start doesn’t begin to describe this epic rally.  Fortunately, we couldn’t have asked for a better day to do all the outdoor sight seeing.  First, we trudged along to the Ponte Vecchio where something happened once, but I’m not sure why it’s famous.  

After came the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens.  These were short-lived because around this time, our hangovers began to kick in.  Naturally, we bought some boxed wine, crackers, cheese, meat, and jam and made the hike to the Piazza Michelangelo where we had a “picnic” that overlooked all of Florence. 

I’m not sure how accepted it is to drink at a monastery, but the monk seemed fine with it when he drank our wine.  Wouldn’t that have been a cool story if it were true?  Damn, oh well.  Moving on, we spent our last night in Florence at a club called Fullup where I ran into more Commodores (some who will never remember that) and we had a…fun night.  Alter egos Master Scarf and Monsieur Lerow tried to take Bambi to Albania. ‘Nuff said.  

Saying goodbye to crackhead and crazy eyes was one of the hardest things I have ever done.  I think it took me under three second to grab my belongings and run.  But, I will never forget them and all the free sangria parties they tried so hard to invite us to.  Live Long and Prosper Florence. We had an incredible time. 

Until next time fans,

Keep on keeping on.

For more photos, check out my facebook album