Well, as you may have guessed by now, I am a major procrastinator. I have been back in the United States for over 6 months, and still haven't completed my journal entries. I hope I remember everything that we did on our last few days...
As I recall, Derek and I were left behind while Julien, Brian, and Andrew set out to pursue their leather addiction in the wild flea-market that is Florence. The first thing I did was try and find that movie theater that Derek and I saw Evolution at when we were here before. It was close the Duomo, and easy to find. Unfortunately, they only played movies at night. So, I popped into a nearby book store and purchased a replacement copy of Jurassic Park (I did not lose this one!) along with some Italian Pokémon cards for my brother.
At some predestined time in the afternoon, Derek and I met up with the other three to head on back to Aix en Provence. Andrew had bought a bright, red, leather jacket that looked like he walked out of Michael Jackson's Thriller music video. It was pretty cool.
On our way back to Aix, we stopped in Pisa to see the world famous leaning tower. What a sight! It's actually kind of scary standing near it because you wonder why something that crooked doesn't just fall over. We ate at a nearby restaurant with a nice view of the tower. The service was slooooooow, with a capital O.
We drove late into the night to arrive back at Julien's place. Sleeping in was really nice, and we spent the day relaxing and meeting some of his friends, including a pair of missionaries who joined us in playing "tame the whale"... a really weird game where we tried to jump on a huge inflatable whale in the swimming pool.
That evening the rest of the guys went out clubbing in Marseilles, but i opted to enjoy my evening reading Jurassic Park. What can I say? I guess I'm rather dull.
The next morning we cleaned the house a little, packed up, and headed off to the airport. Brian and Andrew had bought many bottles of wine in France (I had one or two, as well), and we had quite the time trying to get the airport officials to let us carry them all on board. We eventually succeeded. (It's too bad that we couldn't take a picture of the X-Ray machine as it scanned the bag with the booze.)
Well, the flight home was just as long, and again I couldn't catch a wink.
Going through customs back home was a little tricky because they had to check my big hunk of mozzarella
from Rome that I had brought for my brother, and my tulip bulbs from Amsterdam that I brought for Jennifer.
Luckily, all was well, and I went out the gate to the wonderful sight of the recipient of the tulips. :)
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