Onto Florence

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We put on our packs and went to catch the train to Florence (a last minute decision instead of going straight to Rome).
We made new friends on the train – John and Mimi, who are from America but studying in England. When we arrived they offered for us to go to their hotel in hope that we could get a spare room, so we followed them (well they didn’t know where they were going and we had the map, so they followed us), no rooms available at their place, we then searched another six hotels before we got a recommendation for a hostel around the corner.

After checking in, we all met up again for a snack and a small amount of sightseeing (it was too late for museums, so we saw the main palazzo, duomo and the bridge). Next on the list to visit was ‘Angie’s Pub’, we were very excited about this and called for quite a few drinks!! Angie loved it!! We also met the owner.. Angie. There were also a few photo opportunities here and we also wrote in the guest book to leave our mark! Finding our way home took hours and a lot of laughs, (although we were only a couple blocks away we discovered the next day but at the time we were totally lost and going around in circles) all the streets looked the same and we didn't read the map very well...

Because we arrived in Florence late in the afternoon, and had to catch the midday train to Rome, we were up early to get as much sightseeing done as possible before we had to leave.
We walked around looking at the gorgeous duomo in more detail and several other palazzos and re-visited the bridge and walked over it (almost the same as the day before). Florence is such a beautiful place, although to get into the museums you really need to book ahead! Some people waited for up to 5 hours just to get into one museum!

We said goodbye and grabbed our packs to catch a train to Rome. Running around with our packs on was hilarious, and we couldn’t stop laughing. With an extra 30-40cms out on our backs, we kept forgetting to allow for extra room and that we couldn’t turn around too quickly without knocking people over. Niki almost knocked one lady over and didn’t realise until later when I had to catch up to her, (I was left behind to hear some new Italian words…and apologise for her!!).
We’d love to go back to Florence, but with a little more time than a day to see the museums and galleries.

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