FIRENZE...aka Florence!

Hello All!

We just got back to the hotel from our 2nd match of the trip. We played a "B2" team from Florence that will be a "B1" team next year and the players will get payed to play. They had some very talented young women on the team and the bottom line is they were just more physical than we were. After we got beaten pretty badly the first game, we made game 2 a little tighter, took game 3 from them, and lost a very hard fought game 4. It just goes to show that a little heart and consistent play will make even lesser teams compete against anyone! Jamie and I were very pleased with the persistency of our team and the improvement throughout the match.

Today we started the day off with a 2 1/2-3 hour walking tour with a great local guide. She was awesome! She met us at the hotel around 10 and then we walked all around the city (pretty dang far!). I don't have a map next to me right now to tell you all the highlights, but we went to St. Mark's Plaza, some really neat old palaces that are now museums, Michelangelo's childhood home, some great churches, the Ponte Vecchio (Gold Bridge) , and Michelangelo's palace that sits on top of a hill with some killer views of Florence. I know we did more...but this is what I'm remembering for now. Probably the highlight of the tour, or maybe lowlight, was when Katie Legg decided she was tired of holding her giant water bottle when we were in one of the old palaces and she absentmindedly set it down on a 5-600 year old table! I thought the guard lady was going to chop off her head!!! It was priceless.

After the tour we split our ways, Jamie and I went to this little Italian restaurant with our tour guide Joseph, the girls went to eat somewhere else in the city and I think we all just pilled around a bit and went in some of the shops. Some people came back for a siesta before we left for the match around 5. It is just such a great experience for these girls to soak all this culture in and also get to meet some volleyball players from a different country!

We are now heading to eat some dinner at the Italian place that my friend, Mary Lou, took us to yesterday. Mary Lou and Rich are my college coaches', Kim Kelly,parents who live here in Florence. They have been great to us so far! Being that they are from PA like myself, I am actually going to head over there after dinner and some live music to watch the Penguins Game 1 of the Stanley Cup, which will be on live here at 2am. I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight!!

Tour tomorrow morning of some more fantastic sights in Florence at 9:30 then the afternoon free. I may be able to write tomorrow evening from Mary Lou's, but if not the girls have to pay for interenet, so we probably write when we get into Rome on Monday.

Until then...GO PENS!

Megan