30 hours in Firenze

Unless you stretch the truth a bit, didn't do any of these things in Florence, but I did manage to get there. Of course, from my last post, you know things went, um, a trifle poorly at the train station to purchase the fare. Well, the next morning (Thurs?) I successfully boarded the train from Rome, and boy am I glad I didn't end up in Bologna, which is a fair distance from Florence.


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See, here's what happened. In my confusion and haste, I purchased a ticket to Florence Campo Marte, which is like going to Queens instead of Manhattan. Anyhoo, figured out that I should detrain before setting off for Bologna (the next stop). After that, things improved slightly, because I was able to take an 8-min ride into the main station, Santa Maria Novella (S.M.N.), for free, plus buy return ticket from the little dinky Campo Marte station and not stand in the great big line that surely would have greeted me at S.M.N. Phew!

Some highlights/mishaps:

- obtaining restaurant advice from the friendly hotel clerk - resulting in my enormous dinner of pasta AND roast beef with French fries, most of which I ate.

- no wait in the line to climb the Duomo, though an astoundingly narrow space to climb up

- understanding Florentine Italian more easily than Roman, because when they turned Italy into a country in 1861 (more or less), they had to pick a language because all the individual states spoke their own dialects. Florentine Italian was chosen because the Renaissance was so awesome.

- ogling lots of leather and paper products because Florence is a tourist mecca

- hanging out at the Piazza Signoria at midnight, when there are still lots of people about