A Terrifying Walk and a Day Trip to Florence

So on Friday after we all had a fabulous dinner at a resturant in Cortona, we realized that there are no taxies in Cortona, and the bus had stopped running hours before... so we walked back to Ossaia... in the pitch black night. These are extremely small towns, so there are no street lights and the cars drive at VERY fast speeds. It was probably the most frightening thing I've ever done in my whole life. There were 8 of us, and the usual hour and a half walk took much longer because we had to run back and forth across the road to avoid the cars, and there are no shoulders on the highways. We had one extreme close call and all of us screamed, and also one of the others fell into the ditch dodging a car. It was scary at the time, but somehow also a lot of fun and all of us really bonded on that walk home. After surviving that frightening experience, back at the dig-house and right before bed I accidentally got a severe electric shock, when I was attempting to recharge the batteries on my iPod. I plugged in the converter before I plugged the iPod in, somehow (I'm not really sure) my finger touched the electrical socket and 240 V shot into my right arm...that was the weirdest feeling in my life and I was scared for my life... All these close calls... my conclusion: Italy is dangerous. Then on Saturday a number of us got up early and caught the train to Florence (Firenze in Italian). It was only about a 2 hour train ride from Terontola (the nearest train station to Ossaia). We arrived early in the morning and had breakfast on a street patio. They eat pastry for breakfast here in Italy. I also had a cioccolata caldo (hot chocolate), and here it is as thick as pudding... Really it is probably just hot pudding. Anyway, then we walked to the Duomo and then to the Palazzo Vecchio, which was a palace of the Medici, but is now the Florence city hall. Then we crossed the Ponte Vecchio, this bridge has jewlery stores all the way across the entire thing. We then went to the Boboli Gardens to see a display of Pompey gardens. The grounds were huge and I have lots of pictures. I will post some later. Then we got pizza and eat it on the street corner... it was at that moment that the trip really felt like a european trip! It was nice to just stand on the corner of some street, and just be...exist. It was a great feeling. Then we did a bit of shopping... why not while we were in Florence! We made it to the "leather market" which was tents and tents of street vendors for about 6 blocks. I managed to actually successful barter with one of the vendors and got a great deal on a leather bag! (My one treat for surviving the accomodations in Ossaia - haha!) Then we found a little place on a street patio for dinner. At about 8 we had a mad rush across the city to make it to the train station to catch the last train of the day back to Terontola. We made it and the train seemed to take longer on the way home than it did on the way to Florence. Again, the bus had stopped running hours before, so we had to brave the highway once more... but this time I had come prepared. I had brought along my headlamp and it made the trip a tiny bit safer... but also Terontola is a lot closer to Ossaia than Cortona, so the danger did not last as long. After all the travelling I slept soundly! Today was the first day that we were able to actually sleep in! Even though 9:30 am would not really be considered much of a sleep in for me at home, here it was precious sleep-in time! We decided today that it was time to do some laundry, and since the laundry sink at the dig house was broken (how I have no idea), but it was. We were told there was a laundrymat in one of the very small towns nearby. So we walked with our laundry to Vallone, and when we got there we realized that we needed change/coins to work the machines. So we ventured to the nearby store... a hardware store...and we found... Toiletseats! And only for 9.50€!!! So we bought 2 for the dig-house! Yay! But seeing how inexpensive the toiletseats were just made me even more mad that they had not gotten some for us before at the dig-house... Oh well. Anyway, we did the laundry very quickly (mom and dad -- I shared a load/machine with 2 others... wow! Can you believe it?!!). We were rushing in order to catch the bus into Cortona for the afternoon. We just made it and then there was a flee market going on in Cortona today. The medival festival isn't as exciting as I thought it would be, but Cortona sure does look even more beautiful (if indeed that is possible) with all the medival flags hanging in the streets. Tomorrow we are back in the trenches, and I haven't decided where I'll go next weekend... I'm learning to just go with the flow of things and not plan...anything! Ciao!