Florence...getting there: June 28 - June 29

 So I left for the airport on June 28, 2011 at 2:09pm from the STL hoping to arrive to Florence, Italy the next day (June 29) at 11:45am. Too bad that was not the case...and so the story  begins with the St. Louis airport. Everything went smoothly. JJ and my mom both came to see me off and besides my carry-on luggage being massive and heavy it was so far so good. Once I got to the airport I had a lot of waiting around until my flight that was first taking me to Detroit. I get to Detroit in no time, and my next connecting flight was at 6:40. My first clue that this was not going to be a good flight day should have been when I hugged JJ goodbye, my sunglasses fell off my head and broke in the airport, but I ignored it. My second clue that this was not going to be a good flight day should have been when I searched the Detroit airport for a Taco Bell and had to settle for McDonalds (gross), but I didn't think about that either. No, it took me to actually board the plane in Detroit to realize this just wasn't my day. Boarded the plane...all good. Buckle up and everyone boards...all good. Then all hell broke lose. The plane was the biggest I had ever seen with 390 passengers on board. Next thing we know the pilot comes on the intercom and informs us we will be having a short (ha) delay for a maintance problem, no big deal right? Wrong. That short delay turned into 2 hours thanks to a lot of unneccesary and sort of dumb issues. The lady in front of me got sick and threw up in the bathroom so she had to leave the plane, then they had to find her luggage. Then the people fixing the plane left before they were supposed to so it was delayed even worse. With all that being said, I did not make it to Amsterdam in time to catch my next connecting flight (the most important one) to Florence. Let me tell you...when 390 people do not make their flights all at the same time it takes quite a long time to rebook everyone's tickets. 4 hours in the Amsterdam airport waiting in line just to find out the next earliest flight to Florence is at 8:40pm...mind you I arrived at 10am. Unfortunately I did not have enough time after waiting in line for so long to even go explore the city or try out Amsterdam's "interesting" laws haha just kidding. So there I sat for 8 more hours after waiting in line for 4 in the airport. Luckily I met 4 other friends that were stranded in Amsterdam as well that were also heading to Florence, but all for different reasons. Renata Redford was 26, spoke fluent Italian (among other languages), lived in Florence for a while, and literally was my life saver/pre-tour guide by telling me about the city. Laura is 21 and is going to the same school as I am in Florence just through a different program (not through GSE). She was from Kentucky and a great accent. Josephine Amin was also 21 from LA but went to school in New York. She was the comedian of the group and was not afraid to argue with the airlines people so we could walk away with 50 euro vouchers to fly in Europe, one free long-distance call, and 10euros to spend on food. Thank god for her. The last person we met was John, who was also 21 and from LA. He was a stereotypical "Cali" boy and when we went to get food he was immediately ordering a beer to ease the process. Eventually we waited around long enough for 8:40 to come around so we could get to Florence. I wish I could say that was the end of the nightmare, but we aren't quite there yet. Once we do get into Italy (with a delay, of course) my friends and I decided we would stick together before we all took our own taxi's to our destinations. Unfortunately, for them more than me, we were at the airport baggage claim a lot longer than we were expecting because the other 3 girls' luggage did not make it to Florence. So John and I sat with our bags and waited for them to get done filling out all the necessary paperwork. By then it was around 1am...I got off the plane around 10:45pm. Ugh. So we got to the taxi station, I spoke horrible Italian to get to hotel that my group was meeting at and it is almost 2am at this point. I get dropped off by my taxi driver who luckily spoke Italian right in front of my hotel. I walk up...try to open the door...it is locked. I am stranded in a foreign city with no language skills. I pull and pull and pull at this door frantically looking around for help. Then a revelation happened to me...push. The door was open all along and I was FINALLY finished with the awful plane trip to Florence. Even though I was up for a good 24 hours and I missed the first group dinner with everyone in my program, but at least I was there. Here's hoping the rest of the trip is much better than the way it started...