Fingerprinting

February 24, 2011

This morning I got up bright and early because it’s fingerprinting day! Luckily we live really close to the police station (a lot closer than most of our classmates) so close to 8 we made our way over there to discover a ton of our classmates already there. There ending up being over 50 of us at the Police Station to get fingerprinted even though the other days there are only about 10 or 15 students to get fingerprinted. Petra (our librarian) took a few documents from us and told us we could leave for about half an hour if we wanted to get breakfast or something to drink or whatever, because we wouldn’t be able to start the process anytime soon. A few of us went down the street to this little café that Jackie said has the best bagels. They had tons of pastries and muffins and bagels along with a grand menu from pancakes to apple cinnamon milkshakes to burgers, and just about anything you could think of that an American student would want. I really wasn’t that hungry but couldn’t resist the smell and sight of the pastries, so I ended up with a blueberry muffin which was delicious!

Once we had our little treat we headed back to the Police Station and tried to find our group, but the number of people inside the Police Station was out of control! We searched for quite a few minutes until we finally found our group tucked into a corner with everyone sitting on the steps, floor, or anywhere else they could find a seat because we knew we would definitely be there for a while. It didn’t take long before Petra came over and told us to take out our documents because it shouldn’t be long before we could get started because one window has decided to dedicate themselves to just our group…great! However, little did we know that having only one window doing all of us students would take FOREVER and telling us to get our documents out was quite a tease. Slowly people were getting called up to the window and were free to leave but we saw 10:00 roll by, then 11:00, and eventually around 12:00 Marissa got called! There were only about 10 of us left by that time, and I got called after Marissa and the rest followed. Finally! I don’t understand how the process took so long though because all you had to do was give the woman a couple papers and then stick each finger on this little scanner..I swear two minutes went by and I was done! (Although I did have one slip up because I thought the woman was giving me a “thumbs up” to tell me I was good to go, but she actually was telling me to put my thumb on the scanner to have it re-scanned…whoops!)

The only problem was that we had to be at the Uffizi Gallery for art history at 12:15 and we didn’t end up leaving the station til 12:30. We thought we might be able to go late, but by the time we would grab our school stuff from home, get to the Gallery, get tickets with our museum pass, go through security, and find our class in this massive building I’m sure class would be over with. So I’m glad I was 0 for 3 for going to class today although not going to art history is actually a pain because now I have to find someone I trust to copy their notes, hoping they caught everything from the on-site lecture.

Of course by the time we left the police station we were STARVING so I came back and made a tuna pizza that I bought on sale at Conad the other day. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about tuna on top of a pizza, but I LOVED it! Danielle, Marissa, and I were all hungry for a little gelato and we were feeling adventurous, so we looked up this place that the guy who gave us those temporary internet pen drives a while back told us about. He said it was the best gelato place in Florence and it was called Vivoli which we discovered was near Santa Croce…about a 15ish minute walk from our house. However, it seemed like we were walking along and voulah…there it was! Definitely not very far of a walk at all, and it was a busy – always a good sign! They say here in Italy that if a gelato shop has small portions you know it is fresher, so it is typically better gelato and in this shop the portions were not too big of portions, but some of the flavors were running out and it was only mid-day! There were so many great flavors to choose from, but I wanted to try something new, so I got Meringa (I assume something like meringue?), Rum, and this other flavor that I don’t remember the name of. But what I do know is that the Meringa and the flavor I don’t remember the name of were FABULOUS! Literally I think it is the best gelato I have had since I have been here! DEFINITELY making a trip back there again soon!

We ended up coming back home and started to decide what outfits to bring to Rome and we began to pack our bags. We were all so happy though, because we were taking a train to Rome which meant our bags could weigh a thousand pounds, be as big as we wanted, and we could take lots of liquids with us since we didn’t have to meet airline restrictions! We also didn’t have to take towels or shower shoes because we were staying in a pretty nice hotel instead of a hostel. After a 4 ½ hour day at the train station, the little things like tons of liquids being packed in our bags seemed to lighten the mood :]

P.S.

I forgot to mention a few things from last weekend that I thought were worth mentioning (besides the fact that I got to skype my Aunt Lisa from Michigan the other day which definitely made my day!):
-Our first day of Barcelona I called it the “City of Bicycles and Gorgeous Men” because literally EVERYONE rides bikes in Barcelona. Their city actually has public bikes that you can just hop on and park at any of the bike stands that contain the public bikes that are located all around town. The one day we actually saw the “Bicing” van which is the name on the bikes, and I assume it was picking some bikes up and re-distributing them around the city….pretty cool! The only thing that wasn’t cool is that when we saw the van we were probably on the scariest street I have ever been on in my entire life! We were walking back to our hostel from La Rambla (the wide street with all of the vendors and stuff on it) and I found a shortcut on a side street that I told everyone we should take and the street was called Sant Pau. Little did we know that while walking down Sant Pau we would see a Police officer arguing with an owner of a restaurant outside in the street while the rest of his squad was looking around inside, Muslims holding some sort of convention in a public gymnasium, and prostitutes wearing white pants on a street corner. I’m sure there were more scary things, but clearly my mind is too scarred and doesn’t want to think of them. Haha.
-Our second day in Barcelona I started calling it the “City of trees and poles” because trying to take pictures while riding on top of  a bus is a lot hard than you might think! I would go to snap a really pretty picture but then realized we had passed a tree and you couldn’t even see what I wanted to take a picture of. Or we would be riding along and I would take a picture but later realize that the poles on the top of the bus were smack dab in the center of my pictures. Literally half of my pictures in Barcelona had a pole or tree in the picture somewhere!