(Fun fact: today's my half birthday)
Day 29
My computer broke the day before I left America (it's a long story) and since I've been here, I've only had my phone. I've been meaning to go to the Apple Store who can fix it for free but I needed to get to the store first and there aren't any in Florence. I could take a train to Bologna, but I recently found out that there's also one in the mall that I could get to by taking two buses. Taking the train could be upwards of 40€ to go twice to drop it off and pick it up. The only little issue with the bus option was that I'm easily confused by public transportation and my Italian is not great. But- I'm cheap so once I realized there was a free option, the decision was made.
The adventure was off to a good start when we couldn't even find the bus stop. So we asked someone in the ticket office. Then when we did find it and caught the right bus (the 35B), we didn't know how the ticketing system worked. So we asked a girl if we had to stick our tickets in the ticket reader even though ours are unlimited passes (we did). The bus was really crowded. But it was nice that the stop names were displayed on a sign so we knew when to get off (at Baccellina). Then we barely waited even 2 seconds before the connection bus (the 303) came flying down the road in the middle of nowhere. We wanted to double check it wasn't going to take us farther from our destination, so we asked, and then got on. Even city buses are Mercedes! When we were on it for what seemed like a long time, (and this one didn't announce the stops or even necessarily stop at every stop unless it was requested), we needed to know when to get off. So we asked a boy who was really helpful because he spoke English. He told us to wait until the last stop (I Gigli), and to get off at I Gigli mall.
We made it!!
But no sooner had we rejoiced in our small success that it dawned on us that we weren't even halfway done. I hadn't made an appointment or checked that the Italian Apple Store knew that my hard drive replacement was supposed to be free... and what if no one spoke English? I crossed my fingers and walked confidently in. Unlike American Apple Stores, it was pretty empty and even without an appointment, they took us almost immediately. I explained my problems, they took my computer, they explained that it would be done in 3-4 days and then they'd send an email. Done! ...Still not quite. Now we had to get home. But, we wanted to check out the rest of the mall while we were there...
Unfortunately I Gigli was a good mall. I have always wanted colored eyeliner and colored mascara and we found really good deals. I got green eyeliner and purple mascara. We looked in H&M and we found the Italian Walmart- it was called Panorama I think. My friend found a giant bear and everything was cheap!
Finally we made our way back to the bus stop and prepared for the long journey home.
We watched from 20 feet away as the bus pulled away from the curb and sped off. Then we realized that since it's the last stop, the bus just turns around and stops on the other side of the street to pick up passengers going back towards Florence! Unfortunately it turned around right away. My friend started sprinting across the highway and my other friend followed, pulling off the floppy hat she'd just bought. We reached the other side as it was leaving but it stopped for us. I'm pretty sure everyone was annoyed at the Americanness of us since we actually in Italy and not Florence where the population is mostly tourists. But we made the bus and managed to ask (in italian, kind of) when we needed to get off. And we caught the right bus home and got ourselves back to Florence! Somehow we got off at a different stop we got on, and had to walk an extra block. But it turned out to be really good luck because we passed a shoe store with 10€ fake Docs. TEN EURO. I did it. I don't regret it at all. 
As usual, my actual night diverged from my expected night as soon as I got home and was planning to relax. My friends wanted to go out for aperitivo. I figured I'd turned them down a lot and didn't have much food left anyway and the food was supposed to be good, so why not? It was a good idea because I tried a mimosa and octopus and really liked them both! Afterwards, we went to our friends house for a little bit before I finally made my escape and went to sleep :)
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