June 6, 2003 – Friday

Building in Firenze

In the morning, my mom wanted to do a little shopping before we headed out and she asked me to go with her. She saw these towels she wanted, and needed me to help her negotiate the price down from €8.50 each to €5 each. The guy really wasn’t very bright, which I think made him harder to negotiate with. I went up and offered him €60 for a set of 12 towels, and he was about to take it, but then he grabbed a calculator and added up. He then told me that the towels cost €7.50 each, so the 12 towels would cost €102.50. This started me laughing, and I told the guy that was impossible, because 7.5 multiplied by 12 was 90, and so he was trying to charge me €8.50. He just stared at me for a bit and then pounded furiously at his calculator for a bit. I think he was pissed off that I could do the sums in my head, to be honest. I told my mom she should forget about it, because the towels actually looked quite cheap and very poor quality, and she might as well go to Cost Plus when she got home.

We arrived in Pisa after a short train ride, only to learn that the next train out would be coming in 10 minutes, and the next one after that would not be for several hours, which would force us to arrive back in Switzerland well past midnight. So, we did not get to see Pisa, sadly.

Kelsey insisted on buying us lunch, which was Italian McDonald’s, the only place in the train station. My mom was excited because she had seen this ad walking through Firenze for the “Greek Mac”, which was basically a Big Mac wrapped up in a pita pocket. But for some weird reason, she got a killer craving for it. She wasn’t all that impressed however.

On the train ride home, my parents insisted on treating us to dinner in the first class dining car. My dad said that when he first brought my mother overseas to meet his family, they ate together on the train. So they thought it was a really special experience that they wanted us to have. Sure enough, it was pretty fun.