Getting to Florence

I had an interesting time getting to Florence. I got up a bit late this morning, deciding I would just have a lazy Sunday morning, since I remembered last night that the Vatican is not open on Sundays. According to the time schedule I have there are trains every half hour from Rome to Florence so I wasn't worried about not getting there.

There was a lovely British woman working reception at the hostel. I had not met her before, normally it is these two young guys from Sweden, so I was a little surprised when I saw her. Checkout was a breeze, since the hostel didn't have lockers or keys, you literally just picked up your things and left. But I decided to stick around and figure out a few things to do in Florence and work on some sketches I had started the day before. I had a lovely chat with the British woman while she cooked eggs for one of the Swedish guys who was suffering from a little hangover. Italy, I point out now, is not an easy place to find good food on a Sunday. I ate MacDonalds twice in one day, sacrilege!

Well I finally decided around 2pm to head to the train station. I throughly enjoyed my extra hour, thank you daylight savings. Once at the train station I had a couple of options of trains, the main choice being whether I wanted to pay for the high speed train or not. I opted to not pay the 15 euro reservation fee for the high speed and just go with the slow train that took an exhausting one hour longer. So like a good traveler I waited patiently for the train to arrive.

To my surprise it was a really full train but I was tired so I slept for most of it. Then we got to Florence. I didn't realize until then that this train did not stop at the main station, S.M. Nouvelle. So I looked at the train schedule to see when the next train headed to SMN was leaving. Well there must have been something wrong with the information signs on the platforms because they were all about 3 hours behind. So I got on the train that looked like it was headed in the direction I wanted, and there were lots of people waiting to get on. I am not sure why but after 2 stops I decided I was not going the right direction so I got off at Zambra. I don't recommend Zambra, there isn't much there besides the slab of concrete known as the train station. At this point, I was worried I wouldn't be able to get back without hitchhiking. I checked the train schedule, and at least this time I knew which direction the train should be headed. I found it funny that the platform was labeled 3 and 4, I don't know where 1 and 2 were. The schedule said there would be many more trains on the way although after further inspection with my broken Italian, I realized most of the trains listed were only for special events. Luckily there was WiFi somewhere nearby and I was able to check Eurail and TrenItaliano schedules to deduce that there was another train coming at 9:53, or in about 2 hours. So I sat and waited, imported some photos, and had a nice chat with myself. It was lovely. At one point another train showed up, and waited for me to get on, but I just flagged the conductor to just keep going. Finally 9:53 came and went but there was no train. Then I started to get worried. But like every train in Italy it was only late.

Finally, two hours later than I expected, I arrived at my hostel. Yeah fun travel days!! Ciao