My journey started on Thursday at about noon when Lance brought me to Redmond Airport. I was very anxious about the long trip ahead but luckily I was 100% prepared and organized. I haven’t ever travelled that far alone before, and of course, the biggest concern was getting some sleep on the long haul flight. Luckily, I got two seats to myself and did get a little shut-eye. I am a big fan of Aer Lingus now — their flights were by far the most affordable, the change fee to come early was only $200 and everyone was lovely the whole day.

I arrived in Rome quite late so I stayed the night at the Rome Airport Hilton. It is a perfect place to stay your first night in Italy and there is a train station right there for your next day’s adventure. The Hilton has comfortable rooms, you can walk there from the Airport so you don’t need to arrange a ride or get a shuttle and they have an absolutely massive breakfast which, for my room rate, was included. I highly recommend a night there just to get settled from the long flight. We’ll be staying there the night before we leave Italy as well, since our return flight is early.

The next day, I headed back to the airport to get my Italian SIM card. We had already done the research and were going with the TIM brand and I easily found their booth by the baggage area. The whole process took less than 20 minutes and now I have an Italian phone number + data! I then hopped on the train that goes from FCO (Rome’s main airport) to Florence. There were a couple stops along the way — in Termini, Tiburtina but then we picked up speed to head to Florence. Two hours and 18 minutes later, we arrived at Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence. I wanted to stretch my legs so I walked the 20 minutes to the apartment but boy, those cobblestone streets are not fun for rolling bags.

We found this apartment through VRBO and Emily moved in a week before me. She is studying abroad here from Jan to May and her school living situation didn’t work out so we got her independent housing. The place has two bedrooms so we decided (with her enthusiastic blessing) to take advantage of the situation and have me join her so I can go to Italian school here for three weeks before Lance arrives. Funny enough, she was not here to greet me because she was in Pompeii this weekend with some friends (which is just how I hoped it would be!)

I dropped off my things and decided to take advantage of the daylight and go walk around a little bit. I planned to organize and unpack when it was dark. I found a nice spot to take out some dinner and a little bottle of wine and I slept quite soundly. School starts on Monday morning so I spent Sunday finding my school and getting groceries. It’s been amazing so far.

Emily arrived home from her trip to Pompeii late Sunday evening so we didn’t get to touring until after school on Monday. I have class each day at 9am. My first two hours in the classroom are with Sara – she’s my grammar teacher at La Scuola Parola. She is a great teacher but she speaks so fast and only in Italian. The first few days were overwhelming for sure but I am starting to get the hang of it now after a week. I have been learning all new stuff for me — new verb conjugations and grammar. The 2nd half of my day at school is in conversation class with Francesca and I really enjoy that. I’m in level 2 right now and I can understand everything but still struggle to form clean sentences. I know that the more I use the language, the better I’ll get so I’m speaking only in Italian to everyone I interact with in Florence… waiters, grocery store workers, etc. I’ve even learned how to ask if I can “pet your dog” in Italian!

It’s been fun having the afternoon to explore the city with Emily. It was International Women’s Day, so admission to the museums in town was free for us ladies! We decided it was a good day to go see the Accademia Gallery and the famous statue of David. My school hosted a “walking tour” of the center of Florence so I joined in on that. We had a fun get together on my first Friday of school where all the students met at a Pizza place for dinner — that was my favorite part of the week. Turns out, the school picked a place that Guy Fieri went to which would not have been my first choice (too American!) but it was very very good pizza.

The 2nd weekend I was in town, Emily was away again (this time to Venice) so I spent time walking around the city and working a bunch. Interestingly, it’s a bit hard to get lost here because you can see the Duomo or the Campanile of Palazzo Vecchio pretty easily. I was able to find my way around very well. Florence is very crowded on the weekends and I’m sure during the summer but luckily during the week, it’s easy to get around and I didn’t have anywhere to hurry to anyway. The weather during the week was a bit overcast and rainy/chilly but today we had 70 degrees and sunshine.