To Florence, by train

Look a little closer at the picture, and you may just see three Southern belles on their first train trip to Florence, thanks to the train reflection.

We had quite an adventure on Tuesday. Bobbi and I don't have classes, and we convinced Heather to be wild and skip her class, so we jumped on a train to Florence, one of my favorite places so far. We didn't really have much of a plan for the day except a- shop b- see a fresco cycle in Santa Croce that I will be working on this semester for one of my art history classes. Otherwise, we were roaming the streets, but it was such a lovely day, I'll recap it for you here:

7:04 - I wake up two grumbling roommates to make the 7:40 bus from Cortona to the next town, Camucia. We grab a roll and jam from the breakfast room and race down the mountain to Piazza Garibaldi and wait on the bus. Right on time! (Supposedly rare for Italian public transportation, though I haven't had any problems yet.)

8:15 - The bus drops us off right at the train station, and it is only here that we realize we don't really know what we're doing. Oh well - buy a ticket in the general direction of Florence, and we'll get off when we get somewhere close.

8:26 - Almost hop on the wrong train to Roma. NOT where we want to go... I dislike Rome and Romans a good deal. Luckily, we manage to correct our mistake and hop right back off before it shoots south. We get on the right train, rather excited for this beautiful day and 1 1/2 through the countryside. (And, it looks just like the Hogwarts Express from Harry Potter, so we might have pretended we were on our way to Harry Potter land. I wish)

10:04 - Off the train and out in Florence. We get about 40 feet before we stop at our first shoe store. One of about 3008 for the day. We shopped a lot. No luck here though, so we press on and make our way across the city towards Santa Croce, a church that we didn't visit on our first trip and it houses Michelangelo and Galileo's tombs, Giotto frescos, and a huge monument to Dante.

1:08 - Lunch and a glass of wine at a quiet ristorante near the river. I will never tire of lasagna. Never. Lucky for me, Italy will never let me run out of it. We ate lunch in typical Italian fashion - a glass of the house wine, and a long, slow lunch. It's the biggest meal here. In fact, towns basically shut down so that families can eat lunch together. Even the kids get out of school at 1:15 so that they can share the meal with their family. It's a big deal, so we took it slow.

2:30 - We find Santa Croce, and it is worth the treck across Florence. I had no idea it was this beautifully. Unfortunately there is construction, which really obstructed the full view, but there is so much to see, it was fine. My fresco cycle was hard to see due to a lack of lighting, which isn't uncommon. There is so much art, so many 'masterpieces' that a ton of art gets excluded and put on the back burner.

3:44 - Bobbi and I wander down a seemingly unexciting street, and stumble upon a tiny storefront with paper to make books in the window. I have been buying paper left and right, so I dragged Bob in. Little did we know we would meet Erin, a Canadian who studied in Italy, went home, and came back immediately, homesick for Florence. She's only a couple years older than us, and learned Italian, and calls Florence home, and makes books all day long. Ahh... the sweet life.

6:23 - I'll wrap this up by saying, we couldn't figure out how to get home, so we just jumped on a train. It was the wrong one - go figure. We got fined 5 euro, but it wasn't a really big deal. It dropped us off semi-near where we needed to be, and an hour bus ride later, we made it home again. Exhausted and exhilerated, we had a real adventure I'd say. Next time, I'll be sure to check bus schedules and know how to get home... but it worked out this time.

Today we went to Lucca and Pisa, but I'll wait to post on that when I have all my pictures together. I'm working on getting a snapfish account too so that I can upload a few albums. I had a very good easter and thanks to all the well wishers. Love you all!