... And Ordering Cake From John Lennon

Day Two began bright and early with an 8 a.m. meeting at Il Duomo and a walk to some unidentified giant palace(?) for an introduction to the Florence program by Marcello, Dean of Florence Study Abroad.

The only problem with that was my flatmates and I ended up being late because we got locked in. Yes. Locked in our own apartment, and it took a good ten minutes to escape. There's some kind of deadbolt in the door that we can't control yet and apparently it chose this morning to show itself.

Bethany called Kevin and explained the situation to him so that he could relay the message to the rest of our group. Kevin told the group we got lost in our apartment (the smallest of the apartments at only four rooms), so of course we looked like idiots showing up late at Il Duomo. (Too bad Niccolo wasn't around for that one; we will never redeem ourselves around him).

When we all finally made it to the introduction, Marcello talked about what to expect of our time here, what is expected from us and ground rules for el Palazzo dei Cerchi. As hard as I tried to stay alert, the fact that I'm still not fully recovered from jetlag and that the building we were in was unheated and bitterly cold, I hate to admit that I drifted a bit during all of this.

Then Marijka, another professor, gave a very frightening speech that I'm pretty sure focused on all the students she's seen come through the program in the past two decades who died here due to drinking too much and 1) falling off a balcony, 2) falling in the Arno River or 3) being punted by a vehicle (which, to be fair, could happen to anyone, these Italians are psychos behind the wheel... or handlebars... or reigns).

By the time she finished I was shivering violently and couldn't feel my extremities, despite my layers and stylish pseudo-Italian scarf (a Christmas gift from the bro). I lost my flatmates in the crush of 130 students racing to escape into the comparative warmth of January afternoon sunshine, but ended up with the four guys from our group.

The five of us spent our two hour lunch break getting sandwiches at a tiny cafe and wandering down the banks of the truly breathtaking Arno River.

While down there, we saw some interesting sites, including a band of gypsies, a storefront of massive dead fish, postcards celebrating "the genitals of Firenze (on the statues at Museo Uffizi)," and this LIVING human statue.

Yes, this is a REAL person. Not moving. At all.

We finally made our way back to Cerchi to fill out stay permits and other paperwork before a snack reception hosted by the professors.

After that, it was another roommate night. We meandered around Firenze after leaving Cerchi in search of our first bottle of wine in Italy.

We got lost in a very wealthy part of the Arno, walking past unbelievably grand hotels right on the riverbank. It took us about an hour to get back to the Duomo and find our way home, but we spent that hour window shopping and not getting hit by cars.

Second Lesson Learned: Erika has the directional sense of a homing pigeon. No matter where we are in Florence and even though we're usually somewhere we've never been, Erika is able to sniff out our location and lead Bethany and me in the right direction. I shudder to think what would happen to us without Erika leading us around like a mother duck. (Although she does tend to walk across the streets and continue going whether we are with her or not.)

After this lovely little adventure, we returned home with our wine and took a minute to settle down before heading out to dinner.

We were going to go to the pizza place down the street where we ate our first night and appreciated the fine view of our sexy Italian waiter.

Turns out Sexy Waiter doesn't work Wednesdays. The shop was closed, so we backtracked to a cafe right on the corner of our street.

I was in love the second we walked in. The heavenly sounds of "Please, Please Me" serenaded us as the host seated us at a little table by the window.

The Beatles kept it up all dinner long, with our waiter and John Lennon himself singing along just to impress us Americans (or so it seemed).

I had absolutely perfect spaghetti alla carbonara while singing along to the Beatles' early albums, pumped out of a laptop courtesy of the John Lennon look-alike cook.

He really did look exactly like John Lennon circa 1969, complete with owl eye specs. We spent our whole evening trying to sneak a photo of him without his noticing. We failed, but when we got up to pay our bill, John met us at the register.

He was a complete sweetheart, asking us if we were students and teaching us how to say "a piece of cake," una feta di torta after we ordered a coconut and chocolate slice of cake.

It turns out John's real name is Alessandro and he's our new best friend. For real. We love him. We'll be getting a picture with him as soon as we work up the nerve to ask in Italian. La Casa de Aprile (Bethany's new name for us) will definitely be making many trips to Alessandro's Beatle-inspired ristorante this semester.

And now, a little wine to warm up since the sun has gone down, the heat has turned off and the afghans have come out.

Buona notte!