Ciao Bellas!

I'm home! And glad to be back.

Italy was so amazing and I have about a batrillion pictures and just as many stories to tell, some of which I will share with y'all right here and very soon.

I'm taking today to do pretty much nothing (except laundry), but I want to get it all together to share some of the highlights with all of you!

AND

As promised I have put together a little Italy prize pack for one lucky winner. More details on that to come soon.

Those of you that won the postcards should start getting them over the next couple of weeks. Most of them didn't get mailed until yesterday. It was a lot harder to buy stamps than you would believe.

First off, going to the post office in Italy is like going to the DMV here. You have to go to this little machine and push the right button to get a ticket with a number. Everything is in Italian. Everything. So I took my best guess and picked the "P" button because it had a little envelope icon. Then you have to sit in an uncomfortable plastic chair and wait for your number to pop up on the little screen so you know which window to go to. The problem is, people come in, push a button, look at the number and then decide that the wait is too long, so they throw the ticket away and leave. So there were like 10 numbers that no one actually had, but they had to wait a decent amount of time for each number, just in case the person was on the other side of the room or something.

So after about ten or fifteen minutes, my number finally came up. Two of my friends were there too, and we had decided just to put all our postcards together so we only had to do one transaction. We jump up and run to the window and I hand her the stack of postcards.

Woman: US?
Me: Yes.
Woman: (throws cards back at me) No! (walks away)

My friend and I stare in shock at each other trying to figure out what just happened. After a heated conversation with a guy two windows over she finally comes back and directs us over to him.

We go over and I hold out the postcards again, rather gingerly this time. He asks how many and I say 18. He looks at us for a moment and then shuffles through something and then says, "I have 10."

How does a post office not have stamps? This is in Florence. A big city and a very touristy town.

My friend asks, rather incredulously, "Only 10? You don't have more?"

He says that he only has 10. So we buy them, but then we have the fun of trying to decide, between the 3 of us, which are the most important cards to send right away. And it wasn't until Monday that I was finally able to make it back to a post office to get more stamps to send out the rest of them.

But those of you that sent me your addresses will be receiving them eventually.

and now I shall leave you with a picture of me in San Gimignano:

And I'll be back soon with more info on the contest and more fun and games from Italy!