Adventures & non-adventures whilst studying abroad in London

CONT’D, FLORENCE, ITALY: April 15-21

Sunday, April 18, was the day plans began to unravel.

We decided to embark on a daytrip to Siena, a small city encircled by walls in Tuscany a couple hours outside of Florence by bus. Siena was relatively quiet, despite a fair number of tourists wandering about. We had lunch and then strolled along various streets, saw Siena’s own Duomo and Piazza del Campo, which is one of Europe’s greatest medieval squares. The center of Siena, the piazza is like a beach without any sand or ocean. People were lying out on the huge swath of open plaza as if they were on a beach! Don’t quote me on this, but I think the piazza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (we saw a ton of these on our trip).

At one point, Britt and Claire ducked into an internet café to check their e-mail. Claire had been keeping up with news about the Icelandic volcano, which had erupted while we were in Pisa. I’d heard about it – two British women at our hostel in Pisa couldn’t get back to England because their flight had been cancelled – but I didn’t think anything of it. I naively didn’t think we would be much affected. It’s funny, actually, because when Marcos, Melissa and I ran into those British women in Pisa, we thought, “Good thing we’re not flying back until Monday, a good 4 days away!” HA! Joke was on us. Good one, God – you won that round.

Anyway, Claire had been a bit nervous about our flight back the next day, and at the internet café in Siena, she discovered our flight was likely to be delayed. This, for some reason, caused us to become restless and we cut our Siena daytrip short. We thought it would be best to be somewhere we could act quickly if we needed to, if our flight was cancelled. I still didn’t see any need to panic, but I think sometimes I am too calm when I should actually be freaking out and coming up with an action plan. This was one of those times… haha.

Just hours later, back in Florence, Claire informed us that our flight had indeed been cancelled. Until that very moment, I didn’t think it would be. Melissa and I rushed to the train station to get in a long line with people thinking just like us, hoping to get seats on the next train to Paris, from where we could get on the Chunnel to London. There, on Sunday night, we were told all trains to Paris were booked until Friday, and the only negotiable seats were 1^st class tickets going for 200 to 250 euro. We rebooked our flights knowing those new flights would probably also be cancelled and we were basically stuck until further notice, but there was nothing else we could do.

Hearts started to sink a bit. Stuck in Florence until Friday? Missing two final exams this week? I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, boohoo, you were stuck in FLORENCE on VACATION, poor you!” But I’m not asking for any pity, and I’m not saying our situation was awful. All I am saying is that it is a little bit disheartening when you have been living out of a backpack for 17 days, you haven’t slept in the same bed for more than two or three nights in a row, you are more than ready to go home, and all of a sudden you’re told that there is no way home. When there’s no assurance of anything and you are stranded for God knows how long, home starts to seem pretty far away.

We spent most of the next day checking on flights that were all being cancelled left and right. We brainstormed alternate options and were seriously considering driving from Florence to London. I was prepared to be the sole driver, as I was the only 21-year-old in our group with a valid driver’s license. I think we would have done it, too, if all the rental cars in Florence hadn’t already been rented! We went to Hertz, we went to Avis, we went to smaller companies – nobody had a car for us. Finally, it was time for our group to break up There was no way we were going to get all 5 of us onto a train, or a flight, or a spaceship. Britt started looking into flights from Venice to Liverpool; Claire bought a train ticket to Zurich the next day, hoping to get a train or flight out of Germany; Marcos was still hoping to get to Paris somehow; Melissa and I started considering a train to Prague if our rebooked flights were cancelled.

Melissa’s and my plan probably seems like the most ridiculous, but really, it made quite a bit of sense. The two of us had already bought tickets on a flight from London to Prague that coming Friday, but it was becoming increasingly likely that we wouldn’t make it back to London in time for that flight. So we thought, why not get on a train to Prague and fly out of Prague the following Tuesday on a flight we’d already booked before spring break?

We chewed on this for the rest of the day, everyone slightly unnerved. That night, we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Tijuana (God, how I’ve missed Mexican food), then met up with one of Claire’s USC friends studying abroad in Florence for drinks. It was fun to see some new faces and it got our minds off our predicament for a while!

The next morning we learned the volcano had spouted more ash. REALLY??? Our rebooked flights were cancelled. We were definitely going to Prague. It was nice at least to have some sort of plan of action! We said goodbye to Claire and checked into a new hostel for another night in Florence. Britt napped in the afternoon, while Marcos, Melissa and I decided we might as well explore while we were trapped in Florence! We went shopping, walked around the Piazzale Michelangelo, which offers breathtaking views of Florence, and got into the Basilica di Santa Croce church by saying we wanted to pray (it was closed to tourists). Don’t start thinking we’re awful human beings – we really did pray! I hid my om pendant to be safe, but churches and temples are all the same to me, so I prayed a little anyway.

Afterwards, we scrambled to get tickets to Prague. I’m not really sure why we waited… I guess we figured nobody would be buying tickets to Prague. As it turns out, all tickets to Prague were sold out. But this was only a minor glitch. We got tickets to Budapest instead! We figured we’d get to Budapest, then take a train to Prague. Both Melissa and I really wanted to see Prague anyway . Marcos miraculously managed to get on a special extra train to Paris – I still think there had to have been some ridiculous amount of luck involved for this to happen. The train was leaving in just a few hours, so he packed as quickly as he could and was out the door! Britt was still waiting on her flight to Liverpool on Thursday, and Melissa and I had tickets to Budapest in our hands.

With the knowledge that we had somewhere to go and something to do, we could breathe again. I spent at least a good 2 hours of the rest of the night in a couple of internet cafés, Skype calling a producer at KNBC and a woman at GOOD who I’d been corresponding with via e-mail about potential internships. I got sick of having to postpone interviews with them, and I figured if I really wanted those internships, which I did, I was fully capable of finding a way to make it happen!

It was interesting: because I had been so preoccupied with figuring out a way to get the hell out of Florence, I hadn’t had any time to think about or even much prepare for these interviews. But because it all happened so quickly, I didn’t even have time to be nervous, to psyche myself out – and they were some of the best interviews I’ve ever had! Got both the internships, too .

So, there I was on our last night in Florence, watching Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang and eating Indian food in our hostel, our group completely split up at this point, prepared to extend SPRING BREAK 2010 by another week. Spent my last moments in Florence hand-washing my socks and underwear in the sink (that’s how you know you’ve been traveling way too long). But I was so excited to go to Budapest, because it had been on my list of cities to visit, but I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it. I guess God really wanted me to go to Budapest.

Thank you, Eyjafjallajokull!