We slept hard, didn’t wake up until 11:30. Our friend who lives in Florence gave us tips for lunch and the details for tonight’s bar and club combo. We decided to book a tour to the famous cinque terre for the next morning at 7:00, which could be ugly after another night where coming home late was a guarantee. We tried our hardest to find our friends lunch recommendation. We got very lost. Since navigating on no wifi is hard we looked up the directions on our phone from the hostel and screen shot the map and turn by turn directions. Still no help. We wandered and wandered then came to the conclusion it was over for finding it and settled on a sandwhich shop near our hostel. Large sandwiches for a decent price, and it was the first thing we’d eaten that day. We went back the hostel and both showered.

We decided to go down to the beautiful outdoor patio at our hostel and grab a drink. We ordered a bottle of wine and shortly after our Aussie roommate and four other people he was with came to join us. They all met in Rome at their hostel and came to Florence that day. We sat around and chatted for a couple hours and became friends and they decided they wanted to go to the bar/club with us so we all went to get ready and met up in one of the rooms. Our new friend group consisted of 4 Aussies and a Canadian, they were all cool, accents on point. We drank a little more in the room, then made our way to the bar. I was starting to get tired again; Oktoberfest, traveling, and going out the night before was starting to catch up at the wrong time.

Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington has a campus in Florence and at this bar everyone was pretty much going to Gonzaga and was 20/21. We met a ton of people from close to where we live and the Aussies and Canadians that came with us started meeting some American girls they really liked. The one girl in our group was shocked by American bar culture. She said is this what it’s always like? I said not always, but for the most part yeah. She was shocked by the large crowd, the loudness, and the assertiveness of the girls hitting on guys. I laughed a lot when she said all that. She also didn’t know how to make her way through the crowd, I taught her how to be assertive and push and swim through the sea of people without being apologetic.

After more stiff gin and tonics we made our way to the club. Most of the people from the bar went and there were some local Italians as well. This club was bigger than the one the night before, but just as loud. I felt like I was at the local club in my college town for a while. We danced all night again. I tried my hardest to avoid this creepy girl that kept following me around the club, but that’s okay, it happens. Another late night and I was tired and hungry! Nate and I hadn’t eaten since lunch, and knew we wouldn’t have time to eat in the morning before our car came to pick us up at 6:30 to drop us off at our tour bus that left at 7:00. We somewhat knew our way back but no food places were open at 3:30 so I talked Nate into walking to one more place a few blocks away from our hostel, the kebap shop. I’m half Arab and the Arab run kebap shops have been in every city we’ve gone to, typically about 4 euro for one. We got there and it was open, the Arabs came through clutch! Sure it was the last of their food and probably not super fresh but it didn’t matter. We needed grub.

We made it back to the hostel at about 4:00 and tried to sleep before our 6 alarms were to start going off at 6:00. Our roommate who also booked the tour and wanted us to wake him wasn’t there yet but we went to bed and hoped he’d show up.