10 June: Rome to Florence

This day was a day of lessons in what travel apps to use in which situation. Let’s say for instance you looked at Google Maps to gauge how long it would take to get from Rome to Florence. According to the almighty Google Maps it would take just a couple of hours. Fantastic! So you plan for a couple of hours of travel. What Google Maps can’t take into account is the inner city train that your purchased Eurail covers. That will take twice as long. That completely added stress to the trip. The Eurail set you back $300 for 8 travel days (not 8 days in a row). If you want to take a fast train you at least get a discount but it will still cost 15 euros per person. Sometimes you have to pay for an education. Let me tell you this education will cost.

You book a fast train and pay the $37 that will leave in an hour and a half. You then load up Google Maps to find comfort coffee in the form of a Starbucks. You think it’s sacrilegious to drink a Starbucks in the land of espresso but still you point Google Maps to one. When you get there, however, you find that what you clicked on was a sponsored link to a grocery store and not the Starbucks you thought it was…. Fine… so you find a spot close by that gives you what the locals have. You are there for the full Italian experience after all. Caffeine and a croissant gives your belly something to do in plenty of time to find your train platform. Or does it?

If you had realized even 10 minutes earlier that the high-speed train you paid for was at a completely different station, it would have been possible to take the metro to it. But you have 10 minutes and that’s how long it takes the metro to get there. If you had 10 extra minutes you would have made it. Alright, you say to yourself, let’s book another fast train for the same amount. This time you know the train station you need to get to, and how to take the metro to get there. So you do, and you’re there with 30 minutes to spare.

You look at the train board to find the platform. When it shows up it says platform 13. You follow the signs for platforms 1-20, then 1-12, then 14-20. Wait… what?! What am I missing? You look around, where is platform 13? You find someone that works there and work through the language barrier only to learn that there is no such platform as 13. Did we just buy tickets to the equivalent of Harry Potter’s 9 3/4? Am I not going to Hogwarts but to an Italian leather sweatshop? One stress dial to 11 please.

You head to the train ticket office and get in a long line…. A line you don’t have time to wait in. Other people start showing up to the ticket office, all of them speaking American English. “I’m glad all the Americans are affected, and one Italian,” says a guy who is cutting the line to get some answers. That’s comforting! After a few minutes of what precious time you have dwindled down, you learn that the train board will update 10 minutes before the train is to arrive. You look to the board and see that the platform for your train has been updated to 12. This one exists. You will not be sold into servitude to make the finest Italian leather straps money can buy. That is, however, if you can read train numbers and the platform board better than a kindergartener.

A train comes in close to the time your train does. You get on the train and find your seats occupied by other people. Fortunately these seat thieves speak English and you all learn that this is not the train you booked tickets for. You head to the door not wanting it to leave with you on it. At this point in the story you’re expecting a new paragraph to start. Happily I will have to disappoint you. You get off the wrong train just fine and wait 10 minutes for your actual train to show up and find your seats are not occupied by interlopers. You can rest easy now. You are on your way to Florence.

With the morning being full of stress and undesired misadventure, arriving in Florence is a serene calm. Walking to the Airbnb was like walking in a fairy tale land. The streets gently curved in such a pleasing way. The traffic flowed even better than Rome. Pam taps me on the shoulder with such excitement that I didn’t know what to expect. She enthusiastically pointed out a wine window in a wall. A tiny little door just big enough for a glass of wine to come out of it for the patron wanting it.

The rest of the walk to the lodgings was pleasant. The lodgings are even more pleasant. The host provided a bottle of wine and showed us how the place worked, including a washing machine and where to hang dry our clothes.

With all the stress of travel education way behind us we looked for a place for dinner. As it turns out, kitchens don’t open until 6pm and we were hungry at 4pm. We had a couple of cocktails that were out of this world good. Pam had an OnlyFans P*** Star (Skyy vodka, vanilla, passion fruit, lime, top of pink grapefruit) and I had a Basil Smack (Bickens gin, fresh basil, lemon, sugar).

We sat, talked, and drank two of our respective drinks then headed back to the Airbnb. We started another round of wash. By then it was time for the kitchens to open. We found a different spot I’d found on Maps. I had a tortellini mugellani that was sinfully divine. I don’t remember what Pam had, gnocchi I think.

That meal will end this travel log. This is the wrong audience for the rest of the night.