for those of you who are too impatient to read the whole thing – a short summary: Left Rome, arrived Florence. Bye for now.
For those of you with more patience:
Woke up this morning and packed our bags ready for the short walk (bit over a km) from the apartment to the railway station, only to find it pouring rain. Our host, Aldo, rang us a taxi. Turns out he and his wife own the whole building (about 8 apartments) although he doesn’t live there, he has an apartment elsewhere in Rome. His wife’s family has owned the building since at least the 1930s. They are gradually renovating the apartments. No complaints at all, happily recommend the location and Aldo.
The train trip from Rome to Florence was over in an hour and a half, which was a shame as we were travelling first class and I could really get used to that. It was largely wasted on me though as I kept dropping off to sleep.
A tip for visitors to Rome’s Termini train station, be wary of friendly people who want to help you. Although it sounds like a lovely gesture, it probably isn’t. We were puzzling over which platform we needed to be on when a friendly, helpful young woman offered advice and insisted on showing us where the platform was, although we had worked it out in the meantime. Then she insisted that we owed her a 5€ tip for the assistance. Should have known better, she was an Indian lass and it would be equally suspicious if an Italian popped up at a train station in New Delhi to provide advice.
The taxi from Florence station to our new digs was another adventure. Very little traffic, but huge numbers of pedestrians in central Florence and I’m sure the taxi driver wanted to scare the bejesus out of as many of them as he could. Another nice little apartment, which is directly behind a church. I am going to go out there and wring that bell ringer’s neck before we leave on Monday though. We have only been here a few hours and he’s already annoying me, ringing the bells every 5 minutes. Maybe tomorrow will be quieter, being Sunday and all…
Today was another day of wandering around amazing cobbled streets and marvelling at very old buildings and old bridges, plus looking at an array of statues with willys. Tomorrow we will go and see the real statue of David. We also did a lap of the city on the hop on – hop off bus and they are happy to go up even smaller streets than the buses in Rome. Who needs drugs when you can get this kind of adrenalin rush?
That’s all for today.
Cheers, Steve J.