Two hour delay?!

Sunday- March 11

My alarm went off quite too early for my liking this morning. At 6:40 I pulled myself out of bed and by 7:00 we were out of our hostel and on our way to the airport. We grabbed a metro that took us directly to the airport. It took about 40 minutes, but we made it in time. 

We were a bit nervous about navigating through the airport because it was so big, but we managed to find our check in place. After check in we went through security. I forgot to take off my belt, so of course I set off the alarm. The woman waved me over to her and had to pat me down. It was...interesting...but it was clear that this blonde, blue-eyed American girl was no threat to the Madrid airport. She smiled and said thank you and let me go on my merry way. 

Amy, Bethany and I stopped and got breakfast before going to our gate. We had about 15 minutes until the gate closed so we finished up our breakfast in a little hurry. Once we got to our gate there was a little bit of a line. Soon enough someone came on the speaker and said our plane was delayed for an hour. We weren't happy about this because we were so tired and just wanted to get home. We were planning on being home by 1:00, so it was going to be nice to have the day to ourselves to relax. I had plans to apply to two internships, do homework and blog, but now I wouldn't have as much time as I was planning on. 

We were sitting in the line for another 10 minutes and then all of a sudden everyone in the line got up and started power walking. We followed them while having no idea where they were going. We were led to another gate that was departing for Paris. "Crap, are we going to have a layover in Paris?" 

It ended up being a different flight and we were all asked to sit down and wait until our plane got there. At this point we were told our plane was now delayed 1 hour and 55 minutes instead of one hour. Bethany wasn't too happy. I was annoyed, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. 

The time actually went by pretty quickly. Before I knew it I was standing in line to board the plane. While we were in line Amy and I started talking to an American girl behind us. She lived in Pisa with her boyfriend who she met in the states two years ago. She said she was finishing up school with an internship in Florence for fashion merchandising and then was planning on staying over her with her boyfriend. It was funny because she said she never thought of Italy before, but somehow ended up over here. Her boyfriend is in the Italian Air Force and she met him, actually on Facebook, through a friend. I always thought meeting people on the internet was odd, especially through Facebook, but hey, it worked out for them!

I finally walked through my apartment door in Florence around 4. I was poop dead and so excited to shower. I hadn't showered since Thursday morning because the lines were always so long at the hostel that I just decided I would wait and before I knew it, it was Sunday and I was going home. It was the best shower I've had in a long time and I felt SO clean afterwards. 

For the rest of the night I relaxed, went grocery shopping with Lydia and cooked myself a hearty meal of tortellini. All weekend I had just been eating fried foods and snacks, so I was overjoyed with a full, hearty meal.