Keri Goes Abroad: Florence Part Two And Back To Salzburg

Pat blow-drying his shoes that got soaked from walking through rivers

Pat and I started our last day in Italy with a true Italian breakfast. While the Austrians like bread, meat and cheese to start their day, the Italians seem to prefer pastries and coffee. Pat and I found a cute cafe with very few tourists - a rare find in Florence! - and had our pastries and cappuccinos standing at the counter.

Full of caffeine and sugar, we tackled the leather markets. The previous day we had assessed everything from prices to quality to how annoying we found the salesmen, and had decided on what to buy for ourselves and others. At the time I remember thinking how obnoxious and pushy I found the salespeople; now, having been to Turkey, I know that the Florentine leather market is nothing compared to other places. Regardless, we held our own and even bartered fairly successfully. It definitely helped that we had checked everything out already. We bought a few gifts; I came away with a nice pair of shoes and some gloves, and Pat may have gotten a belt. His real success, though, was a purse for Kelsey. We looked at everything: brown purses, black purses, purses with handles and with straps, purses with flaps and buckles and buttons. Finally Pat settled on a brown purse with a top opening. Later that day, Pat checked his email and found that what Kelsey really wanted was a satchel style bag...so we ended up returning the first purse and getting a second.

That night we followed the advice of a Lonely Planet entry and went to a fancy restaurant. Still scared of the veggie-ecoli outbreak, we stuck to pasta (again) for our last night in Italy. We shared some delicious goat cheese mousse, and sampled each others' tortellini and maccheroni with pesto. The house wine was so good that we even bought some to bring home to Dad. And, if that weren't enough, we capped the night off with a relaxing drink on the steps of the Duomo while watching the various tourists stroll by.

The following day we boarded a train back to Salzburg, through a very rainy Verona, and then through the scenic but progressively colder mountains of Südtirol and Innsbruck, and finally back to Salzburg. Our last few days in Salzburg were fairly uneventful. We ate some vegetables, found that the cactus in my building had bloomed overnight, and had a beer or two in the Belgian bar down the street. We also spent a pleasant evening eating pulled pork, cooked by Lars, at the castle that he and Nora (an assistant and her husband) now live in. Finally, feeling sad/excited/exhausted, we boarded a plane back to America and I closed the first chapter of my Fulbright experience. Whew! And you're only hearing about it nine months after the fact!