Studying abroad in Florence means adopting the lifestyle of the native city dwellers, that also means using their transportation. Specifically, I mean the bullet trains. My first “wow” moment was booking and using these trains to travel to Venice for a weekend. It was amazing how simple it was to book the ticket online and the cost was not terrible either. After arriving to the train station in Florence and boarding, we arrived in Venice after 2 hours. This experience really drove home that I am in a different country. It really impacted the way I view the US transportation system. In Europe, it is very common to travel by train across long distances instead of driving, which saves money and helps the environment. I realized that having these train services in the US could help people travel more and cutback on CO2 emissions. This experience taught me how far behind the US is with transportation and how we need to overcome this obstacle for the future.