David.

The next morning, Adrienne woke me up. "Patrick, both of our alarms have gone off. It's time to get up."

"Oh, Ok."

I scrambled out of bed. The previous night we had set our alarms for 7:45, and one of our room-mates (I forget her name. I nicknamed her "Texas" within 30 seconds of meeting her [Adrienne says her name was Erin]) had asked that we wake her at the same time since her alarm clock was deafening. "It sounds like a fire alarm. I'm afraid I'll wake up the whole building." We had assured her that was no problem.

So I went over and nudged her shin. "Hey, it's 7:45."

Murmurs came from under her blanketed form. "Huh? Oh. Ok."

I then returned to find my alarm clock. It normally wakes me almost instantly and I was surprised it hadn't. Besides I had to turn it off so it wouldn't continue to go off while I was in the shower.

I glanced at the time as I reached for the alarm function's on-off switch. 6:53 stared at me in the darkness.

"What the . . . Hey 80, what time did you say it was?"

"7:45. Why?"

"80. It isn't even seven o'clock yet. I could have slept for another 40 minutes."

"What? Both our alarms went off?"

"No, they didn't. They couldn't have. Mine is still over 50 minutes from it's set time."

"Oh. Sorry."

Fully awake (and feeling a little guilty about Texas) I grabbed my shower stuff and headed for the shower.

When I returned from the shower and had repacked my gear, I went back over at the correct time and shook her leg again. I figure she had looked at a clock and figured out my error. "Hey, it's 7:45 again." I said.

I heard laughter from under the sheet and a muffled "Ok. Thanks."

A few minutes later we sat in the common room and checked e-mail, and Texas came out as we grabbed a quick breakfast. "Thanks for the wakeup."

"No problem. Sorry about the early mix-up. 80 here told me that our alarms had both gone off an hour before they really did."

After Allejandro made a laughing entrance and put his autograph on Texas' hip (teaching us a valuable lesson: exposed midriffs will get you extra unsolicited attention at Firenze Inn!) we set our gear in a corner and hit the streets of Florence with only two objectives: See David, and do a little shopping.

After visiting the magnificent sculpture, which is a lot more powerful in person than I expected (it has the opposite effect the Mona Lisa has when you first see it) we toured the museum in which it is housed, and then hit the streets of Florence.

An hour of window shopping and wandering left us with slightly lighter wallets and a few memorable purchases that will serve as pleasant reminders of our short visit to the city. Within another two hours we had grabbed our bags and were back in the train system. It was time to see the Italian coast and head for Bari and Brindisi. In just 36 hours we intended to be on a Ferry for Greece.