More Trains, More Towns-Florence and Monterosso

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Last time I left off, we had left Venice and retreated to Verona to rest up for a long weekend ahead. We left Saturday morning for the train station around 8 a.m., and barely made our train because we wanted to all pay on our cards but the machines wouldn’t let us, so we had to wait in a very long line. We then took a train to Bologna, that was fairly uneventful. There, we switched over to the train that would take us to Florence, or Firenze. As it turns out, the end of the line for this train is Rome, so it was packed full and we ended up standing in the end of the train car for just over an hour until we reached Florence. We thought that was bad enough, not to mention some of the girls were on the other side of the doors in a car and the automatic doors kept opening, which was too funny. We made the best of it, even with most of our bags (we all took backpacks crammed full to make it through the weekend) in the part that connects two cars-probably not the best or safest idea, but hey, we made it there!

After we arrived in Florence, we busted out some maps to find our hostel. Yes, we stayed in a hostel. No, it was not that bad-more in a minute. It turns out it was very close, but we turned down the opposite side of the street first so it took us a little while. In reality, it was about a 5 minute walk from the station, if that. We weren’t sure what to look for as far as signs, but we found it because we were greeted by the owner, who had been expecting us!

Originally, he wanted to put us in two rooms for 5 people each, and the room with four people would have a boy in it. Needless to say, we were very against it, especially because we had our passports and camera equipment with us. Eventually we got it all figured out and settled in to our rooms. We also found out that the hostel was only 10 days old, and the guy who owned it ran a bed and breakfast upstairs but wanted something for people who couldn't afford to pay those prices, so he opened the hostel. My biggest complaint is that the rooms were very stuffy...not hot, but the air felt very thick, we all woke up with stuffy noses and the like, and one girl was sick yesterday, we have a feeling that may have had something to do with it. The bathroom was also very, very gross-we had to share with boys, and it was clean at first, but the ventilation was horrible, it smelled, it was very narrow and every time someone took a shower the floor would be soaking wet for hours. So I just avoided using it as much as possible, and waited to shower until we returned Monday night (I had showered right before we left, too).

Immediately after we got settled, we stored all our belongings we weren't carrying with us under our beds and set off to find the Duomo (very, very famous-if you’ve ever had western civ/art history/anything like that, you know it and its dome) because one of the girls has been to Italy before and remembered climbing the steps to the top of the dome, and she wanted us all to do it before it closed at 5 p.m. The Duomo is not open on Sundays. We found it fairly easily, it is essentially the center of the city, and once you find it you can get to any of the main parts that we wanted to get to. It was also only a few minutes from our place. I would have liked to see the whole thing, but it cost money to do the three separate entrances-the dome, the church and the baptistry, where the east doors were designed in a contest back in the 1400’s that I really wanted to see.

Instead, we just waited in line to climb the dome. The stairs are the original ones built back when the dome was finished around the 15th century. There are almost 500 of them, and they twist, turn, spiral and are very narrow, steep or shallow at times. It is scary imagining have had to climb them for some reason back in the day, before electricity and the railings were put in. There are holes cut in the walls to let sunlight in, but had you had to climb them at night or when it was very cloudy or dark outside, I can only imagine how easy it would have been to fall and hurt yourself. It’s also incredible and completely mind-blowing to think how old it all was, especially ones you got to the top and came through the little trap door onto the “roof”-everything is as it was more than 500 years ago, and you are standing on slabs of marble that were placed there that long ago. It’s just incredible.

After exhausting ourselves with the dome, we set off to see the Ponte Vecchio and then to the school of leather, in the back of an old church. We also did some shopping, and then stopped for dinner across from a museum that used to be a castle after walking ourselves way too far down the street. The food was okay, and our waiter was overly flirtatious and over the top, compared to how exhausted we all were. We asked him his opinion on the nightlife, though, and he told us of a few places. We then walked back and got ready for the night, and then went in search of one of the places our waiter had told us about, called Twice.

When we first got there, there was hardly anyone there. One of the funny things about Italy is that they listen to American music, and often sing along but sing the wrong words in places, and they also have no clue what they’re singing. Anyway, we found the place because we heard Candyman by Christina Aguilera playing, and there was hardly anyone there (by that, I mean two other people) but we went in and got a table for the nine of us. Apparently, the charge 2 euro a piece for each drink you order from the table, which we found out when we all ordered a drink, which were very expensive, so I was done after that. We sat there for a long time, and as we were we saw people walk by but we couldn’t see the entrance or the bar, and apparently a lot of people had come in.

After a while, the opened the doors to the back room/dance floor, and people made their way out there. We also met some girls studying here for a few months from the states, and several Americans throughout the night. We were also frequently the only people singing all the right words, and we got a lot of strange looks. Highly entertaining, I must say. We ended up staying there until just after two a.m., when we noticed that all the Americans we had been talking to had started to leave or left, and the music was no longer anything we recognized. It still made for a very fun night, and we had made a circle while dancing to block out all the creepy Italian guys, which worked pretty well.

Sunday when we got up, it was rainy, and not a very nice day. We had been planning on going to the Uffizi and seeing some Titian, like Venus of Urbino, and other works, but we didn’t get up early enough to make it. Instead, we went to the train station first to get our tickets to Cinque Terre for the next day, and then we went to do more shopping and take some photos around the city, even though the weather wasn’t the best. We also went in the academy to see David, briefly, but the rest of the artwork, mostly alterpieces, didn’t interest me much. The Robert Maplethorpe photography in the beginning was amazing, though.

That night, a few of us went out and took some night shots, myself included. I got some pretty good ones. We also ate dinner at the same place as we had had lunch that day, and while everyone else enjoyed it I seemed to have some trouble with them, because my original pizza for lunch wasn’t great, and then I got cheese ravioli in butter and sage that night. I thought that it was going to be a sort of sauce, but instead they were very, very dry. They also cost me 7 euro, and I only got 10 ravioli, which I couldn’t even make myself eat all of them since they were so dry. Basically, a waste of money.

I bought several pretty yet cheap scarves, and also a purse-i know, I caved. I also purchased some other leather goods including a few gifts. Some of the other girls bought even more expensive bags, and I also found some elephant statues but the lady wanted 8 euro a piece for the two, and they were too small to merit that large of an amount-but that’s okay, I’ve bought about 10 total here.

We left early Monday morning to head for Monterosso, one of the Cinque Terre, where there are beaches and it is very beautiful. The day there was pretty uneventful, we walked around a bit and had lunch and an early dinner, and mostly hung out on the beach, but unfortunately it was cloudy so it didn’t make for very good photos, and it was pretty cool out so I didn’t really go in the water, just put shorts on and waded in. I also took a few hundred photos right there. The water was an amazing blue, the beach was made up of different sized rocks as opposed to a lot of sand and seashells, but it was still beautiful and I’d definitely love to go back there.

At the end of the day, we went to go get on our train, and this is where the fun started (not really…). We took the one train out from Monterosso to La Spezia National, like we were supposed to. But then, there, we got on the train to Milan, which was not on our ticket but we thought we were supposed to go through there. I had a feeling we were getting on the wrong train, but thats what the guy at the station had told us to get on, although he didn’t speak English well, so he put us on the wrong train. It had assigned/reserved seating, and we ended up getting kicked out of the ones we sat in shortly after we got on, and spent the next four hours alternating between standing and sitting in the end of a car, where the doors to outside are. Basically, it really sucked! Then, once we finally go to Milan, around 10pm, we caught a 1030 to Verona and arrived at almost 1230am.

Half of us then took a taxi back, and the other half walked-i was in the lobby using internet when they arrived an hour later, so I’m pretty glad I opted for the taxi ride instead. Also, we had to pay 10 euro extra to be allowed the “privilege” of standing on the train to Milan for four hours. And when did the guy who made us pay do it? 10 minutes before we got there.
That’s all about the weekend, Ciao!

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