Seattle to Florence

THE NIGHT BEFORE

Travel can be a stressful time. I thought it was all pretty stress-free until the night before. First, Delta had a system outage. Flights were being canceled and the website and mobile app weren’t working. Luckily, I had checked in and printed out my ticket a couple of hours prior to the outage. According to a couple of news outlets, about 150 flights were canceled, and more are expected to be canceled.

SEATTLE TO AMSTERDAM

(1:25pm-8:30am)

The flight from Seattle to Amsterdam went smoothly. I arrived there in the morning, so I got to see the gorgeous sunrise as we made the descent into the Schiphol airport. I thought I had a tight connection to Florence and I was quite worried about finding the gate (I didn’t know how far away it would be). Luckily once we got off the plane, there were staff members waiting to answer any questions about way-finding or connecting flights. I got instructions to where the departure board was. To get to my gate, I had to go through customs. The line was so long, but it went super fast. In the end, I had 20 minutes to spare and take a breather.

AMSTERDAM TO FLORENCE

 (9:55am-3:30pm)

The flight to Florence went smoothly until the end. The weather wasn’t safe for us to land. So we did tiny circles over the Firenze airport for 30 minutes to wait and see if the weather would clear up. If not, we would land in Pisa (the weather was clear there), and get bused back to the Firenze airport. After 30 minutes, the weather was getting better but not good enough to land. So they decided to wait another 30 minutes 😑 and continue circling around. But it was worth the wait because after about 20 minutes they announced we were going to land. We were almost out of the clouds descending to the airport…

WHEN SUDDENLY..!!

They decided nope and start accelerating back up into the clouds. It looked like we weren’t going to land at the Firenze airport because they couldn’t see the runway. The plane didn’t have enough fuel left to continue circling around for another 30 minutes, so they diverted the plane to Pisa. They announced that a bus would be waiting for us at the airport to bus us back to Florence. After the plane landed, we had a bus transport us to the main terminal to pick up luggage from baggage claim.

Trying to find the bus taking us to Florence was difficult. They announced in Italian, where to catch it over the speaker (which wasn’t very helpful). But everyone on the flight was going to the bus, so I just followed the crowd. They ended up dropping us back off at the Florence Airport (even though everyone already had their luggage). We had to then get a taxi to where our housing orientation was. I luckily got in a taxi with another student also going to the same place, so the fare was a lot cheaper. I have been driven in Italy by Italian drivers before, but I forgot how scary and fearless they are (Tailgating to a new level).

THE APARTMENT

After we got dropped off, we had to sit through a housing presentation. Afterward, we got our key to our apartments as well as a map on how to get there (if you wanted to walk). I decided to walk because I didn’t want to pay to take another taxi and I only had one little suitcase and my backpack. I didn’t realize how narrow the sidewalks were, and being slightly lost didn’t help. After about 20 minutes of walking, I finally got to the door of the apartment. I couldn’t figure out how to open the main door, but this nice man smoking by the apartment chuckled and said,”Ma’am, it’s already open.” (I was clearly very tired). My other roommate also tried to open the door with the key and the same man told her it was open as well. My apartment is on the second story, which meant I had to go up two very tall and long flights of stairs. I also couldn’t figure out how to open the apartment door, but luckily one of the roommates was there, and let me in.

I couldn’t believe the size of our apartment. We have THREE dining room tables, a full kitchen, two bathrooms, a washer, and three bedrooms. When you talk in the main living rooms, it echoes. We also get a nice view of the dome of the Duomo. I have one roommate, and 3 other housemates (total of 5 people including me). Every one of us, except for one girl, had to take a bus to the Florence airport from Pisa or Bologna because of visibility issues.

After we talked to our landlord, who showed us how to work some of the appliances, we all decided to go into town and get some food (I hadn’t eaten a “real” meal since the first flight). We ended up eating at Bar Chiaroscuro. This nifty little place is where you can get a buffet of appetizers and a drink for only €8. It was okay, didn’t love it, but didn’t hate it. We all then went up the street to Amorino, a flower gelato shop. It was really really yummy. I got a small size, in a cone, with a caramel macaron all for €4.40. We even got to pick 3 flavors of gelato. Overall it was a pretty good first evening in Florence.