Get me to a nunnery

Hey all,

Back in Florence. Another hostel – this one is huge – 200 odd beds. Used to be a convent – the church is still in use as a church – have just left it, but the nunnery has been sold off. A kind of odd part of Florence that I hadn't been to before – the church and nunnery are quite old – many of the surrounding buildings are newish – I guess this must have been out in the sticks a couple of hundred years ago or whatever, and the town has grown up slowly around what would have been a fairly out of the way church. In a seven bed dorm, but at this stage there is only one person in the room (me).  It might stay that way if I am lucky, at least until it gets closer to the weekend (update - I now have an English student (architecture) here - he has done nothing outrageous, yet).  Nice old building – huge, long halls. Only sour note was that at dinner (you can buy it here) there were a horde of German children from a family of about sixty I think, who were running around like loons – which was bad enough – but then they started marching in time to a song on the radio. I thought this was in extremely poor taste.  However, their parents seemed to think it cute and the Italians were too nervous to ask them to stop, so they just kept marching, the villains, saying things like "Nein! Nein!" in their sinister little children-of-the-corn voices.

Today was a transport day mainly – apart from that pretty laid back – more walking than I have done since I got to Pisa and the foot is hurting a bit but seems to have held up this far. Here to pick up some books and my big jacket – is getting cold now so looking forward to seeing the jacket again. Immediate problem is figuring out some way to make a bit of money over the next month and a half or so – will see if anything is going here, then might have to head for England or Ireland. Not sure yet. Or I might nut out completely, go to somewhere like Romania where it won't cost me so much to live.

FYI – last night's room mates in Pisa: a recently graduated electrical engineer from Perth doing the round the world before after university thing. A Chinese guy hailing from Germany, who used to be an electrical engineer, but now just travels around on the cheap – also described himself as a professional roulette player – has a sure fire system – can't lose. Went out for dinner with these two. I briefly queried the concept of playing roulette at a professional level but was in danger of having the system explained to me, so quickly agreed that it was possible, even sensible, and changed the subject. Also a Scottish bloke who was really chirpy – as chirpy as a regular non-Scot human being – although we didn't get to talk to him until this morning.

Photo – the view from the convent window to where I assume the good nuns use to grow their food.

Cheers, B.