Couchsurfing, take 1 :)

Ate the last chocolate-filled croissant I'll probably have in a while this morning. Tears, I know :-) but it was off to Florence for us!! Bridget made a new friend on the train. He was awesome. Retired music teacher and conductor and director and had been everywhere (except the US) conducting and stuff - really, really interesting guy to talk to. We didn't make many friends on the train other than that, though. We had joined 3 women earlier on our trip (assigned seats, sadness) and they all looked at the two of us like "excuse me, when did they allow grungy little children with backpacks to sit with us high and mighty folk?". I was trying not to laugh...

Arrived in Florence with 8 hours to kill, very little phone battery, no maps, and no idea what to do! God basically was like "oh hey, no worries, I have your back" and we were like "oh yeah, that's right". Our train got to Florence around noon and we couldn't check in to our living arrangements until 8pm that night...because we're COUCHSURFING!! Whole new set of adventures here!! So, yeah, our host didn't want us at his house until 8pm tonight. Our first stop was to a McDonald's to try to get wifi, and we felt bad just doing wifi (and we were hungry), so we ordered food. Except the wifi didn't even work. We at McDonald's for no good reason! Gross!! 

But, bonus, we went outside and Florence is the greatest town ever because they have wifi!! Like, Firenze WiFi!! It's an actual thing! So we walked through a market and found a super famous square, the general Duomo area, with more gorgeous cathedrals and such. Cattedrale de S. Maria del Flore is gimongous. Huge. And super colorful. 

Yeah. Lots of wandering. Sat right down near the river for awhile and ate carrots and Austrian-style Nutella. Watched the sun set from a bridge, stunning. I can't remember if we talked about this yesterday, but Italian architecture looks just a tad monotonous and boring until you're like "oh look, sunset", and then suddenly everything complements each other and brings out the colors and the whole world gets so gorgeous. Wandered to a church with a live ORGAN CONCERT happening. Legitimately spent an hour talking to God and listening to the organ. Visited another church. Really cool. There were 4 or 5 nuns just kneeling in front of the alter, praying. Like, for a long time. Super inspiring and encouraging and food for thought. We walked into a few churches that were holding mass. 

Going on a church tour of Europe. But churches should be open 24 hours and welcoming and such, so it makes me quite happy.

Finally made our way to the bus stop, still like an hour before Leo was expecting us, but we hopped on a bus anyway out to his house. We found it totally smoothly, but rather than be total creepers and wait outside his door until 8, we wandered out to a field nearby and looked at the stars. The field said private property, but whatever. Looked at stars, talked to God. Wonderful half hour. As we walked back to Leo's we ran into 2 other people staying with him that night and the 4 of us walked up to his apartment together, which was lovely!

Leo is interesting. He's fun. And he's a phenomenal cook. Sometimes I think you have to be a little crazy to host more than 600 people every year (which he does, host over 600 couchsurfers every year). I really like the 2 other couchsurfers we're staying with - one went Rome to Arcidissio to Florence and in fact stayed at the same place we're planning on in Arcidissio, so we got to hear lots of advice on that! The other guy is traveling throughout Europe for like 6 months. Impressive!! We get to cook dinner tomorrow...which means burritos, round 2 :-)