Florence!

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It has been a busy few days. Dad FINALLY met me at the train station in Milan at 5:15pm on Sunday. In addition to screwing up his flight, the airline also lost his luggage! (He still has yet to get it!) He arrived none-too-soon as I had purchased tickets for us on the 5:30 train to Florence. I was ready to get out of there. I was tired of hanging out in the train station with all of my stuff fearing that I was going to get pick pocketed at any moment. We got to Florence in the evening and checked into our hotel. Luckily Florence is pretty easy to navigate and we didn’t have any difficulty finding it. (Florence is a great city!) Pretty soon after that we headed out to dinner at a restaurant that had been recommended to us, Zaza. We sat outside in what in the daytime is the market square and had great food. It was an excellent start to our time there.

The next morning our tour guide, Giovanni, met us at our hotel to take us on a three hour walking tour of the city. We started out pretty early so it was relatively quiet, which was nice. (The museums are also all closed on Mondays which made it even less of a crowd.) We went first to see the outside of the Duomo, which is the Cathedral, and the tallest building in the city. We also saw the old political square and the oldest bridge over the river, along with many other churches and other buildings. Luckily Florence is pretty condensed so it really is possible to easily walk and see it all. At 11am Giovanni took us to the train station and helped us to buy tickets to the small town of Foccuchio, where Dad had arranged for us to be taken to a vineyard for lunch. Well, that was a crazy episode. An “adventure” as Dad would say. We either got on the wrong train or missed our stop or something because we overshot our destination. We realized this when we got to Pisa (of leaning tower fame, unfortunately we only saw the train station!). So, we had to get on another train going back in the opposite direction. We were also quite distressed because we couldn’t figure out how to make calls using my phone. You have to dial 0039 + the number for European phones. There are other digits you have to dial if you are calling from the US, but it wasn’t clear to us what we had to do. People were also having difficulty reaching us because they assumed that my phone was from the US and weren’t dialing 44 since it was a British phone. This made it impossible for us to contact the person we were supposed to be meeting.

Well, we got on the train and Dad accosted this poor girl to try and help him call this person (it turns out the guy’s phone wasn’t even working, so it wasn’t entirely our fault…great…). I was kind of just not wanting to be involved in the situation but Dad kept working on it (i.e. pestering the girl). Then a friend of the girl’s got on the train who spoke better English than her and he started working with Dad. Dad finally showed him the address of the place we were trying to go and he said that luckily for us it was very close to his house and that he’d be willing to drive us there. We decided to go with this option, since we figured that the guy from the vineyard probably would have given up on us. So, Dad continued talking with Julio, who we found out is my age (Dad has no reservations about straight up asking people their age), and a pharmaceutical chemistry student. He did drive us to the vineyard (scariest car ride of my life) and dad and the vineyard guy, Allesandro, insisted that he stay for lunch, which he did. That ended up being good because it gave me someone to talk to because Allesandro was pretty much only interested in talking business with Dad… i.e. boring for me.

Then we took a brief tour of the wine-making facilities and bid Julio good bye. (Dad was sure to get his email and postal addresses, other things he has no reservations about asking for… so awkward…) and Allesandro drove us back to the train station. We rode back to Florence uneventfully and had a little bit of time before our dinner plans. I spent some time trying to extract some information from Dad’s “notes” (a big stack of random papers held together with a binder clip that contain important logistical data about our trip… at this point, just the sight of them makes me cringe…) so that we could avoid additional situations like the “Pisa” incident.

A little bit before eight pm we headed off to a nearby hotel to have dinner with Dad’s old friends Andrea and Allesandro (not the same person as the lunch guy, even though they do have the same first name). We had dinner at a fancy restaurant on the top floors of a hotel, which was great because it meant we got to look out over the city… seeing the Duomo and other sights we had seen that day all lit up at night from that vantage point was truly spectacular. We had a nice time and Allesandro explained to me how I could make calls from my phone so that was extremely useful! The one sad thing about the whole experience was when I went to the bathroom I could not figure out how to get the faucet to work. I can honestly say that has never happened to me before. I have since figured out that many of the faucets are operated by little foot pedals on the floor… so bizarre. Although I must say that I do like Italian toilets better than British ones and the water pressure here is also better. So, double points for Italy.

Today was a little bit less structured. We got up and headed over to the Academia Museum, where the original David lives. I have to say, it is very large and impressive. After that, we went back to the Duomo to have a look inside. We decided to climb to the top of the dome (four hundred and seventy something steps!) which almost killed me, but the views of the city were worth it. It was great to see all of the familiar landmarks as well as the surrounding countryside. We happened to be up there at noon, and we could hear the bells of all the churches in the city, which was truly a magical experience that I will never forget. 😊 After heading back down from the dome, it was time for lunch. We found a café where we could sit outside -the weather continues to be beautiful.

After that we just sort of wandered. We walked around looking at the old buildings and found our way over to the market square to check out what all of the vendors were selling. It’s amazing how similar their items are and just how many of them there are. If you want scarves or leather bags or wallets that is the place to go! We also got gelato—yum! Then it was just about time to head back to the hotel to collect our luggage and head over to the train station to catch our train to Rome.

The train ride to Rome was beautiful. It was wonderful to get to look out at the picturesque countryside. However, once we got to Rome, things turned stressful. I had been a little nervous about getting to our hotel, because this was not well spelled-out in any of the information I had been able to find in Dad’s “notes” and I had not been able to find the street with our hotel on the maps of Rome that I had. When we got to Rome, I was all for taking a taxi to the hotel but Dad insisted that we take the bus. The bus was SUPER crowded and it was unclear exactly where we should be getting off. We were told that if we got off at a certain point the hotel would be “right there,” which we interpreted as “in sight.” Well whoever said that lied. I was just very tired and angry and we found the street where the hotel was supposed to be, but then Dad didn’t have an address for the hotel (?!?—don’t even get me started about that one… I think I am going to have to go through his notes again to make sure the rest of the trip is plotted out!). I finally called the hotel and got their address, but finding the place was still a little tricky. We had actually passed the hotel because it had this little tiny sign and not even so much as a light. The elevator is like super old fashioned i.e. it makes me feel like I might die.

I don’t know, I think our hotel is sketchy. The proprietor who speaks pretty much no English says that, while the rooms are non-smoking he smokes in the lobby, which is why there is a smoky odor. (EVERYONE smokes here, it's so gross!) I don’t know. Like I said, sketchy. I am glad not to be staying here alone. Dad took me to dinner and somewhere between eating and drinking a bottle of white wine I began speaking to him again. I think the waiter thought we were kind of nutty because we were eating at 6:30, whereas he says most people in Rome don’t eat until 9pm. I mean, he was right, we are kind of nutty… just not for that reason!

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Photos

Milan train station
spent so much time here I figured I ought to have a picture!

Dad taking a picture
i.e. a familiar sight!

oldest bridge
used to have only butchers who have since been replaced with jewelry stores... something about the smell :)

Photo 15
this guy found his way into several of our pics... interestingly when we crossed back over the bridge like 30 minutes later he was STILL THERE!

Photo 21
church Santa Maria Novella (for which the train station is also named!)

Fucecchio
we finally made it!