the weekend.

Friday, Liz, Piya, and I talked our teacher into letting class out early so we could catch a train to PERUGIA. Now, Perugia is a lovely city and all, I'm sure we'd've gotten there eventually, but it was particularly pressing to get there because:

THERE WAS A CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL.

This is no joke. We needed the chocolate. We were excited. We were RUNNING to the train station. We got our tickets, got on the train...and sat. And sat. And ssaaaattt for 50 minutes after the designated departure time of the train.

Grrr, we thought. But no big deal. We'll still get there.

We were so excited about getting there, we missed the fact that we were supposed to change trains in Arezzo. We were on a Rome-bound train and I happened to glance at my map...and realized we were SOUTH of Perugia, heading towards Rome. Whoops! We got off at the next stop, bought tickets back up to the change point. So this took awhile...but it was ok! We were going to get there! When we got back to the appropriate station, we hopped off to find the other platform with the train headed to Perugia. A few frantic moments later, we figured out we should be on binario 4...which was, in fact, the train we had just. gotten. off. Cool.

So we finally got to Perugia. We needed to find the appropriate bus to get up to Piazza Italia. People were all around us wearing chocolate crowns...we were extremely excited. We got on a bus...but it wasn't going anywhere. We waited for awhile, then got on another bus. Yes! We were just about at the Piazza Italia...when a CAR on the side of the road caught on FIRE. Our bus driver pulled off and ran over with a fire extinguisher. Whew. Thrills and chills.

The chocolate festival was AMAAAAZING!!!! We just ate...and it was amazing.

Saturday, Marcello and Giuliana took us roomies to a piano concert, which was excellent. Good times.

SUNDAY, Liz and I decided to take it easy and head out to Fiesole, about a half hour outside Florence. It's even on an ATAF bus line so we were in the money. Very cute -- we had a 2 hours walking tour in Liz's guidebook so we took that but not very seriously. Hung around for mass in the church, took our time in the Etruscan and Roman ruins, hurried through the musem (we were hungry!) We had heard that there was an Indian restaurant in Fiesole and sought it out -- but it was CLOSED (we'll have to go back). The views of Florence were fantastic, despite the haze, and we took a slow walk down to San Dominico, where we checked out the graveyard of the church (weird, huh?) and caught the bus back to Florence. It was perfect - we got out of the city and enjoyed the PERFECT weather but it wasn't a very big trip. Very relaxing!