Florence with New/Old Friends

  We started off our trip Florence by missing our train reservation... This disappointing moment cost us 65 Euro a piece. As you can imagine we were rather upset with our loss on top of the fact that we were parting from our Texas friends.  Naturally, as always does, time went on and we ended up on a night train, which I personally enjoyed.  The room we had on the train we just a little thing and we were bunking with one other passenger.  He had to been in his teens and was a Munich native who was also headed to Florence.  I also briefly talked to a guy who had planned a trip to Europe as a bachelor, however, he met a girl and she made the decision to tag along with him.  He was rather upset and advised me that it is better to come to Europe single.  I think he was a tad bitter.

  We arrived to Florence on a Monday morning. In Berlin, Dylan had been checking Facebook and realized that one of his long time friend, Miles, was going to be in Florence on a trip with his girlfriend, Laura.  Wild discovery if you ask me.  After searching the city for a good hour looking for their hotel we final saw Miles outside and made ourselves at home.  They offered to let us stay in their hotel room since we had not booked a hostel yet, we accepted.  After getting settled and taking a very necessary shower they took us around and showed us some sites.  They had been in Florence for somewhere around a week already and just filled us with knowledge.  We stopped for a meal at a local restaurant and had pizza, pasta, cal-zones, wine, and bread with oil.  It was bomb and Miles picked up the tab. (This was the first of many things they treated us too. They were far to nice and it was extremely appreciated, especially with our missing of the train.) After lunch they showed us around some more. The city is gorgeous, the Medici Family did a hell of job building the city. Despite the slavery involved in its creation, it was amazing. 

  Now that we had absorbed some culture things started to get just straight silly.  We hit up the market and bought booze, enough to say the least.  We took it to the room and by eight in the night we were good and goofy and had a slew of empty bottles. Miles, Dylan, and I went out to get more.  On the way back to the room we saw a Chinese restaurant and could not resist, even though we had left the wonderful Laura to sit alone in the room.  *Sorry about that!)

  As we ate things got carried away, had a few beers, and overstayed our welcome at the restaurant.  When we returned to the room we found Lady Laura in a rather unpleasant mood so we just all bear hugged her until she had no choice but to join in our good spirit.  The four of us took the newly acquired bottles to a park close by and continued to talk about life, love, blah, blah, blah, we were drunk, haha. It was a great night, but only to get goofier.  Some local drunk told us the, *whore mafia*(these foreign computers give me trouble to find the right punctuation keys), would not like us in the park....We left. 

  On the way back I convinced Miles to jump on my back so I could give him a piggyback ride.  I started to run and we were trucking pretty good, but my motor functions at the time were lacking and Miles is the biggest passenger I have ever escorted in that manner.  Boom, concrete.  Next, Dylan gave him a ride.. DOWN GOES FRAZIER!  Finally, Dylan tried to jump on Miles back and again, Boom, curb this time. By the time we made it to the hotel steps we looked down to notice that Miles foot was bleeding rather intensely so we sneaked up to the room and took care of it. We do not have the pictures yet but the rest of the night was basically the three of us guys bromancing and drinking before bed.. The four of us were quite snug that night and we all woke up bruised and battered.  Fun, but rather painful. We had breakfast at a cafe and then me and Dylan headed to our campsite for the next two nights.  

  It took us a good 2 to 3 hours to find our campsite and we just stuffed pizza in our faces and relaxed.  We met a couple from Louisiana and they were awesome.  They told us of a sandwich joint that was world famous in Florence and it was the business.  

My enourmous 5 euro sandwhich...so damn good.

  We spent the next day at Pisa with Laura and Miles and took the very typical photos with the tower.  I do not have those pics in my possession, but they will be up eventually.  Many of the pictures from this portion of the trip will make their appearance at a later date. Pisa was cool but not much to see after the tower and such.  We went back to Florence and showered and met back up with the couple for one last dinner at sandwich shop, whose food you see above.  That night Dylan and I met a group of people at the campsite and sat, talked, and chilled for the night.  Florence was great to us.]

Miles and Laura,

Thanks again for all the fun times we shared.  You were more than hospitable to us and treated us to far more than we could have asked for.  When I get back to COMO I will most definitely come visit and return the favor.  I am glad I got to meet you guys and hope to see you soon.. We all know Dylan loves the snot out of you too, haha.  Thanks again. What an awesome surprise.