florence, day 3

my favorite sculpture of perseus by cellini (i think)


we got up early and had our complimentary breakfast. after learning taht checkout time was 1130, we walked around a bit, to catch some last sites we missed. we saw san croce cathedral, which was neat. one thing that we did resolve that was stressing me was how to get to greece. we happened to see an olympic air place, so we went in to check out air fares. let me go back a moment to an incident that happened on our second day in florence. when we were at palazzo pitti (after we decided that we werent going to go in), i saw a greek couple, and thought to ask them what the best way to greecce was. you see, my main problem was that we couldnt find an airline to take us directly from rome to athens. aegean air and olympic air both had websites that were shit, and we couldnt manage to get a proper booking online (due to their poor web design), so we quit with them, and forgot about them. back to the greeks. i wanted to go up to them, but they had just bought tickets to go inside the gallery, and since they were walking in, my excuse for not talking to them was that they were on their way to do something, and i would have certainly bothered them. i decided that if i saw another greek, i would ask them. it so happened that very soon after, another greek pair passed us, but i didnt talk to them either. i am much too shy, you know. i felt embarassed that i didnt talk to either couple, but figured ‘whatever.’ then there werre three greek guys who passed us (all of these people i could tell by their language, and the fact that they were carrying ugide books with greek writing on them). you see, the last two couples were older people, so i didnt feel comfortable, but these three guys were just our age, and looked cool, so i stopped them, ‘siygnomi.’ i introduced myself, and revealed to them that i didnt speak much greek. at first i think that they thought i was weird, because they didnt know what this was all about; they definietly had weird looks on their faces. but as then asked them about the best ways to get from rome to athens, they loosened up, and with their little english, and my little greek, it went pretty well. they recommended aegean airlines, and one of them gave me their ticket stub with the web address, and the phone number. it felt good knowing that i could communicate effectively enough in greek.

back to the third day in florence. we after finishing with santa croce (i thought it was ‘san’ but apparently this is a woman), we walked back to the hotel, ready to check out. on the way, we saw a travel agency with a big ad for greece in the front. (by the way, i stopped with the olympic air, and they quoted me a price, but i didnt buy, knowing i could probably come back later, and i wanted to see if i could find a price lower than 286 euros). so we stopped in the travel agency, and asked them for flights from rome to athens. she quoted me 276 euros with olympic (that we talked to earlier; although the price seems cheaper, it isnt becuase she would have added taxes). becuase we did our home work with the greek guys, i asked about aegean air. she quoted us an even lower price, which was cool enough, so we took it. so, now we have our tickets to greece for august 31, and much stress is reduced.