oh my life is a wonderful piece of art.

My Firenze journey has changed locations. Instead of writing this post from the comfort of a yellow kitchen under a window that looks upon eerie statues of children, I am sitting in the center of queen size bed looking out the window where the sun settled against the dirty red tiled roof and flowers.

Hotel Bretagna feels like the Hilton of Italy.  I checked in this morning and they already knew who I was and were waiting to help carry my bags to my room (where were they on the long treacherous walk to the hotel? Hee hee.) When I asked the lady at the front desk what the best way was to ensure that I had a taxi leaving the hotel at four a.m. on Tuesday morning she seemed very confused. I asked if I should do it the night before and have it reserved. She told me just to do it that morning. I looked at her with utter shock as my mouth uttered “You mean someone will be at the front desk that early?” She looked at me like I was speaking fluent German and said “of course, we are here twenty four seven.” I really wanted to reply with a “ well excuse my confusion but every other Italian hotel I have ever stayed in, the owner went to bed and doors were locked until seven.” But instead I smiled sweetly and said perfeto, like a true Italian, if I may add. 

(this is what I looked like when she told me that they are there all hours of night. the only difference was that I was by myself and I still had my shirt on)

My room is huge and welcoming. The bed sits in the frame of the window, to the left a large desk and dresser with a full size mirror. (The full sized mirror earns double points because every girl needs a full-length mirror in order to complete getting ready.)

The bathroom is beautiful. It has fully convinced me that when I have my own house I want a square sink. The shower looks like a space station and it was out of this world talking a shower in it. Let me tell you what it’s all about. It is a box. It has three showerheads. The first is your standard circle detachable showerhead coming from the left corner. On the ceiling there is a giant sunflower shaped showerhead. And then there is a bench, with three rows of ten misters. You can turn each on one individually. Oh also, did I mention that there is a special light that is dimmed and relaxing and it has an Italian radio station built in? Well it does. I could live in it. This shower was worth the entire trip over here. All I can say is thank goodness I do not have this at home or at the apartment I spent the last four months in, because our water bill would be on fire.

Now I know you are probably thinking “wow. This chick showed up to the hotel at ten in the morning and spent the entire day in the shower” but I am here to inform you that I did leave, not only the shower but also, the hotel. After wiping the sweat off my brow from that extra large work out to hike over the piazza’s to get to my hotel (but it was worth it,) I went out to explore the town. Now my hotel is only a block away from the Ponte Vecchio (aka the most amazing thing on earth,) so I did not have to walk far to find excitement. Now I have not photographic proof of this event because it was too crowded to even thinking of getting a shot of the action, but people were golfing off the bridge. It wasn’t just a few old Italian men who had a few too much to drink. No this was an actual planned, sponsored, announced, full on, golf tournament. They were positioned on a platform on the edge of the bridge. Then out on the river were large patches of floating grass boats with those little flags in the hole. (My aunt Michael just had a heart attack about how badly I am describing this golf set up. Please forgive me for butchering your sport Michael. I just do not know the terms and flags in the hole pretty much sum it up for me.) They would putt off of it and try to make it on these boats. It was the most interesting thing. Hopefully I can get in there and document it tomorrow.

Since this was such a big deal, the city was crowded and alive. The streets were busy with crazed Italian Christmas shoppers (much more elegant and intense than those we have in Uh-Merica.)  Piazza Rubbuplica had Volvo booths set up and giant television screens. There was even Santa. Oddly enough, no one wanted to sit on his lap and tell him what he or she wanted for Christmas.

I also stumbled upon this group of adorable, incredibly talented, elementary school children singing Christmas songs. It really put me into the Christmas spirit and I watched them for about an hour.

(Please note the video may not be done processing. I just uploaded my first Youtube video after three failed attempts to upload the video in different formats right to the blog.)

I was the only “tourist” who stayed and watched. I kept getting odd looks from the parents so I decided to adopt a kid and pretend she was my sister. I would smile and clap after the instructor said something that I did not understand. I think people started to believe it. The girl in the on the second row, four people in, is my adoptive singing sister for an hour. She is very animated and we look nothing a like. 

The one thing that annoyed me about this concert was the parents and their iPhones. Now I am one for the iPhone. I think they are great, classy, everyone should have one. BUT there were text message dings going left and right like they were trying to recreate the tune of jingle bells. These parents could not just sit there and watch their kids (like I was doing,) they had to play on their iPhones.

Speaking of iPhones, let’s talk about Verbaledudette’s Gift Guide Number Eighteen: The Dokkiri Hand Case

Do not even ask where I found this. BUT although it is creepy as hell, what a great gift. I just cannot express my feelings about holding hands with your iphone. It will really create a bond to your friend electronic.

Where to find: http://www.strapya-world.com/categories/6034_6035_6136.html

Price: I think $65.00’s

And then just for another phone excuse reasoning here is the: Native Union Pop Phone Handset:

Classic. Simple. Retro. This is for the people that you do not think will find the humor in the hand one. (If you are a buying a gift for me you should know that I am not one for the hand one and secondly I do not have an iPhone.)

Where to find this: http://www.nativeunion.com/us/popphone.html

Price: $29.90

Now back to my day.

The most exciting part of my day is when a fifty-euro bill literally blew in my direction. I stepped on this piece of paper at my feet and goodness gracious it was money. I was thrilled! How many times do you get to claim a random fifty-euro bill as yours!? Never. Never. Never. Except this once. I decided that with this little find I was going to treat myself to something really nice.

 I was walking through San Lorenzo and I saw it: the cutest leather messenger bag. I walked over to the woman, grey hair and a touch of crazy, and asked her how much it was. To my surprise her English was flawless as she spoke, like a waterfall mind you, that it was ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY EURO. I was crushed, but I knew I had to have it and I had to have it for fifty euro. I turned on my Concrete Rodeo Swag Skills (for you who do not know what this is, it is a little talent my father passed to me. I walk into a skate shop and walk out with more product than he would ever get. If I learned anything on the skate tour it is how to bargain (and how to dry out sweaty skater money and take showers with only twenty five cents and three minutes.) I talked to her about the quality of the bag, she told me how it was made and showed me pictures of the artist’s wife. I told her my story. I am student who is studying art for the past four months and was recently kicked out of my apartment because the term end and now is spending the last three days in a hotel alone because my best friend had flight complications. The last part really got to her. She even called over her little assistant guy and told him and he said “give her a discount mama, she is a pretty girl.” I wanted to hug this boy. To bad he was way old and too short for me because after that line and what it got me, we could have gotten married. She dropped the price to fifty euro. In conclusion I got two hugs from people I had just met wishing me happy holidays and a real, paten leather, sexy, red, hipster, Italian, messenger bag, that some poor soul with a hole in his wallet bought for me.

Oh my life is a wonderful piece of art.

(Yes. I did just tie my life in to art in a cheesy line so i could show you this photograph i took of a spray can street artist that I found today. Worth all that extra cheese, eh?) 

Now I am sitting in bed (like I mentioned earlier) and Italia’s version of VH1, DeeJay, is having karaoke night on the television. They are playing loads of random songs (ABBA to The Backstreet Boys, Amy Winehouse to The Killers, Cold Play to songs from Grease the Musical) music videos, but with the lyrics on the bottom of the screen. When the artist sings the lyrics, the words change to orange. It is actually really great because the lyrics will come up and I will have one of those “oh so that is what they actually say there... hmm... that is much different than what I was saying” moments.

So I am sitting in a comfortable bed, in a beautiful city, at one o clock on a Sunday morning singing to myself while writing this letter to you. You should feel special for that.

Good morning to Europe, Good evening to my fans back home. :)

(Spell check just corrected my smiley face for me. I originally had this : ) but then they told me this :) was grammatically correct.)

xoxo