Advertisement
Published: June 13th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Visiting Florence was a lesson in one of the laws of traveling: it's often the people you're with that determine whether you like a place and not the place itself. I visited Florence when I backpacked Europe in 1999, but I wasn't that impressed. It was congested and packed with aggressive scooters that made me fear for my life when I crossed the street, and after seeing Michelangelo's statue of David, there didn't seem to be that much to do.
But this time, Pam and I had a great day in Florence. Maybe because it rained part of the day or maybe because we had just been in Rome, but the streets seemed less congested and I liked being in a city small enough to walk everywhere.
We started our day by walking 10 minutes from the train station to the Mercato Centrale, a lively market that outside sells cheap (in price, not quality) purses, scarves, leather items and clothing, and is packed with food vendors inside. We bought souvenirs (and scarves for ourselves), then had fun roaming the cavernous market sampling the wonderful cheeses and sauces. We bought $2 sandwiches, a tomato, cucumber and a $2 bottle of
Mercato Centrale
Outside, there was booth after booth selling scarves, purses, leather goods and clothes at cheap prices. white wine that was better than most of the wine I've had in the U.S., and ate a picnic-style lunch in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence's main square (drinking the wine from water bottles like the backpackers we were!).
After lunch we checked out the Duomo, an extremely large church with an intricate exterior and large red-brick dome that dominates the skyline, and then walked to Ponte Vecchio, an interesting bridge with jewelry stores lining the sides.
At 5 p.m., we went to a wine tasting that Pam had found on the Internet before our trip. For $35, we tasted four wines from the Tuscan region and an olive oil, plus had appetizers. The olive oil was the best part of the tasting -- it was lighter than anything I'd had before. Pam and I bought the olive oil (it will taste great on salads) and I bought a bottle of white wine, which was sweet and smooth, for only $8.
But lest things be too easy, catching our overnight train to Dijon, France, was unexpectedly adventurous. We arrived at the train station with plenty of time, but didn't see our train listed. We went to the
Mercato Centrale
Eyeing the dried meats inside the cavernous market. information desk and found out there was
another train station in Florence, which our train was departing from. We had 15 minutes and the station was 12-15 minutes away by taxi. The employee -- no joke -- made the sign of the cross when he saw what time it was. With our large packs on our back, we ran out and got to the taxi line just as an older couple that had made the same mistake was getting into a taxi. We shared their taxi to the other station, arriving one minute before our train was supposed to leave. We ran to the platform and thankfully, our train was three minutes late. We were close this time, but not so lucky in Dijon.
Our trip was culminating in Besancon, a small French town near Switzerland where a band Pam liked, Placebo, was playing a concert (apparently Placebo is very popular in Europe). To get to Besancon, we planned to take an overnight train to Dijon, arrive at 6:30 a.m., spend the day exploring Dijon and then take a train the short distance to Besancon. However, this was one of the times that the language barrier and not knowing
how things work made it very frustrating to travel. After a fitful night sleep on a stiff sleeper with a pathetic pillow, at 6 a.m. a train conductor gave Pam and I back our passports, which is supposed to indicate your stop is coming up soon. But he told me the train was running 80 minutes late. So Pam and I went back to bed, assuming they would announce the stop. But they didn't. When we realized we had stopped in Dijon, we started to grab our bags, being as quiet as possible since the four other people in our compartment were traveling on to Paris and still sleeping. The next thing we knew, the train started moving again. It stopped for just three minutes and we didn't make it off the train. We ended up stuck on the train for the 2 1/2 hours to Paris, feeling very angry. In Paris we fruitlessly tried to explain that we didn't think we should have to pay for return tickets since they didn't announce the stop and only stopped for three minutes because the train was running late, but customer service in Europe isn't like in America, and we got no
Lunch
Pam cutting a cucumber for our sandwiches, under the watchful eye of a reproduction of Michelangelo's David across the square. sympathy. In the end, we paid for the return tickets and got to Besancon around 4 p.m. (without exploring Dijon, but by that point I never wanted to see that city again). We were able to put the experience behind us and enjoy the concert, but we were happy to return to Geneva the next day and be done with trains.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.123s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0856s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb