In Transit

Today was setup to be an easy trip to Florence... as you might guess from my use of ellipses, it wasn't. I hadn't heard back from my host on where to leave her key, and the little bistro was not yet open. But I picked up their wifi and saw an email reply from my host (interesting, considering her place has no Internet) to contact her sister, who was staying nearby. However, this was last night, so when I contacted her sister she was in the middle of Venice. This meant tsking vaporetto 1 (which goes to EVERY STOP) to meet her. By then, I'd lost a good half hour and all hope of making my train. Lucky for me, I'm travrling by Eurail pass so I only needed to fork over another 10 € for a reservation instead of 45. Yikes. So instead of leaving at 9:30 (original plan) or 10:30 (sold out), I was set to leave at 11:30. Oncr everything was sorted out, i plugged in my headphones and watched The A-Team on my phone. Finally, two hours behind schedule, I was on a train headed for Florence! Well... it was headed for Rome, technically, but Florence was on the way.

Home-free! Right? Nope, not yet. After finding my way tto my airbnb place here, no one answered when I rang the buzzer. Perfect. I had called them after the train fiasco to let them know, but never heard back. Finally someone coming out of the building let me inside. I finally got a hold of Alessandro and Azadeh and found out which apartment was theirs (top floor...meaning lugging my stuff up 3 flights of stairs). However, they werent home (since I had been running way late) and neither were their other guests. So... I tapped into their wifi and jumped on Facebook for half an hour until the other guests showed up.

The other guests, by the way were insanely cool. They were a couple from Bolivia named Mauricio and Adela, and they were on their way to Venice. We exchanged advice, suggestions, and maps on Venice and Florence and talked forfor a good hour before they left to catch their train. But not before we exchanged emails - they told me to let them know if I ever travel to South America. :) Plus one for traveling. They were awesome.

When Azadeh did arrive, she was extremely nice anand helpful. It turns out that they own a few apartments throughout Florence and rent them out to travelers such as myself and the Mauricio's. She set me up with suggestions, keys, information, and my own area for groceries iin the kitchen before heading back out.

So, by now it was early evening and I still needed to plot out where I would go and when. I ended up deciding kn dinner around here based on Azadeh's suggestions, gelato (I passed like six gelaterias on my way in) and walking to a bridge to look out at the Ponte del Vecchio.

Dinner was at the "open bar" of a super nice restaurant kn the Arno called The Golden View. And by "open bar" they mean one drink and an all you can eat buffet of appetizers and finger food. I ordered the most delicious mojito ever (those would be raspberries and a cherry you see there) and snacked down on the buffet. Half the time I wasn't sure what I was eating, but it was pretty good food. Here is my mojito and a few of the favorite buffet pickings:

Basically, today was a transition day - which is fine, because it meant I got to chillax for a bit before I literally bring it home with Florence and Rome sightseeing adventures.

Tomorrow? Why, I think I shall ride a horse through Tuscan vineyards and watch the sunset from Piazza de Michelangelo. What say you? (Doesn't matter, I'm going anyway.)