PontifiKate

Day 5: Sat. Sept. 17th -- (ROME) FLORENCE

['I'm truly sorry to make you all wait longer for the daily life stuff, but I have it in my head that I have to finish this first, and I just can't talk myself out of it. I'm'a hurryin'!]

Florence photos with titles and some captions

Florence photos in slideshow format

Well, since we felt we’d cheated Rome a little, we decided to stay the morning. We went and saw the Trevi Fountain (which was cool!) and tossed our coins in, which supposedly means we’re destined to come back to Rome. :o) Then we walked over to the Colosseum. It was pretty amazing. (Yet again, I felt I needed more knowledge to get the full experience. Oh, well. I took lots and lots of pictures regardless!) Actually, between the Vatican and the Colosseum, I feel like I’ve gone on an unintended Christian pilgrimage of sorts. Cool. Oh -- and I scored a deck of excellent Rome playing cards at the Colosseum, which is very cool because I collect playing cards (preferably place-specific).

Then we booked it over to the Termini to catch our train to Florence -- you know, the trip we supposedly only needed our Eurail passes for. We actually checked with second guy before we got on, too, and he just nudged us onto the train. Okay. So we picked a spot and sat down, feeling like stowaways because we didn’t have reserved seating. After about fifteen minutes on the train, the guy came by for our tickets and threatened to make us pay extra because we hadn’t written in that date of travel on our Eurail passes before we got on the train. Oohhh! Evidently, you’re not supposed to do so in front of them, but he turned a blind eye (rather than charge us full price for the trip). Ack!

So, the train we took was fine and all, but it wasn’t exactly the express. We stopped at almost every single little town on the way to Florence, making what we thought would be a two-hour trip four hours. It sure was pretty, though! La bella Italia!

We got to Florence all right, and while it seemed pretty enough (I was kind of too absorbed in trying to find our hostel to care), we couldn’t ignore that it didn’t smell so great. Oh, well.

After much walking, we found our hostel and successfully checked in. Our room was all girls, but the bathrooms were very mixed and not as private as one (me!) might hope. Very early morning showers it is!

I got to check my e-mail for the first time and very nearly cried at the e-mail I got from Mom (and would’ve, had Elissa and some guy named Juan not been there).

It had begun to rain a little (which did wonders for the smell!) and we set out because we were hungry and we wanted to take advantage of the daylight. We walked a while, grabbed a bite, crossed Ponte Vicchio (the house-bridge with all the fine jewelry stores -- wow!), and found a cute little café, where we talked and journaled.



Then it was back for bed!

posted by Kate @ 5:26 AM