On most trains, you don't need a reservation unless you are travelling on an overnight train and want to reserve a bed. Except on Italian trains, where you need to make a reservation no matter what. Seeing as how they are hardly ever full, this makes no sense. But whatever. We wanted to go to Florence on Thursday, then come back Saturday night. But in the process of booking the trains for us to come back to Heidelberg on Saturday, we found out that the Italian trains decided this would be a good weekend for them to go on strike. For us, this meant that we either needed to leave Italy by midnight on Friday night or cancel our trip all together.
We decided to go ahead with the plan, then leave Friday night for France. It was a stressful hour of planning for us. That night, when we got to the train station, we learned that the strike didn't actually start until 9PM on Saturday, meaning we could leave late late on Friday night and be fine. So we changed our plans again, and booked a sleeping car for Avignon, France on Friday night.
Then, we took our overnight train to Florence on Thursday. When we got there Friday morning, we found our way to the Pepperdine Florence house (where we were staying). After eating breakfast an amazing, free, all-you-can-eat Italian cafe, we headed out to hurry up and see as much of Florence as we could in one day. We saw Michelangelo's David, which was so cool- I had no idea how tall it was! We also saw the Duemo, this elaborate cathedral, and of course, went shopping.
That night we came back to the house, and we discovered that the train strike had been called off, so we could stay in Florence! hmmm... this meant that we basically lost the money we had spent in reserving the train to Avignon, but we did get to sleep in comfortable, stationary beds for another night AND stay in Florence! yay.
Saturday morning, we stopped at the cafe for another round of deliciousness, then went to a couple of museums, including the Uficci (i don't know how you spell that), where Botecelli's Birth of Venus and Spring are. That was pretty cool, and there were a lot more medieval/renaissance art pieces inside. We walked around some more, discovered a chocolate festival (!), and found a market. Then, we went to the train station to reserve a spot for a train leaving Saturday night that would get us back to Germany on Sunday morning. After walking down a pretty sketchy street for what felt like 3 hours (but was probably more like 30 minutes), we got to what looked like an abandoned prison. It wasn't however, and despite our fears, we got the courage to walk inside to book our train. As we began to talk to one of the ticket people, we found out that an overnight trip was going to cost about 50 euros, way more than what we were willing to pay. But if we waited and left Sunday morning, it would only cost us 10 (plus, that train left from a much less creepy station).
So once again, our plans changed as we decided to spend yet another night in the Florence house before leaving. Sunday morning went pretty smoothly, we found our trains fine. The ride home was nice (homework filled, but nice), minus an incident with a very confused Italian man who thought we were his lost friends...
Despite the situation with the trains, I had a really fun and relaxing weekend! However, while Florence is a nice place to visit, I'm so glad I live in Germany.
Chocolate festival!
Spring
Vespas- the only way to travel in Italy!
our sleeping car!
The cathedral
The fake David... the one they let you take pictures by.
