Fixing the Baroque things in Firenze

In our continuing spring break saga... we arrived in Italy in the authentic (read: scary) town of Ancona, where the train station is located a convenient 2 kilometers (8,342.6 miles) from the docks. And we walked. And it was hot. BUT we made it to the train station where I was told that the $200 Italy rail pass I had purchased online before the trip was not valid for travel across Italy. Silly me.

Serious side note: don't ever buy the Eurorail Pass online. It's such a scam. Just buy your tickets individually before or even when you get there

Anyway, we did get on a train that we figured would get us somewhere near where we wanted to go. Trains in Italy go from major city to major city, as most trains do, but there is no indication of intermediate stops, so you have to guess based on your knowledge of Italian geography. Our first train to Bologna was headed to Turin and our train to Firenze terminated at Rome. Sure. Also, there are no signs at the Firenze station telling you that you are in fact in Firenze (oh, and for all you American types out there... Firenze = Florence), so Tim had to run around trying to figure out where we were.

But we did somehow make it there (we assume) and went to our hostel, which was in a great location and had a great atmosphere.

More fun travel tips: buy a Lonely Planet guidebook. They rock.

We got gelato (dessert before dinner is a great policy) and found an Italian restaurant where I got awesome red wine and got called "Jersey" all night by the waiter once he found out where I was from. This included yelling from across the restaurant "Jersey, want some more bread?" and inviting us out to a club. Which we didn't go to. We walked around instead and I decided that, as cool as Florence was, Siena would be cooler (call me random). It also seemed like a cool Tuscan city located close to Florence.

Lies.

We took the train to Siena the next morning, which turns out takes longer than trains to Rome. This is partly because Siena is farther from Florence than I thought, but mostly because the train we were on was built by the same people who built the Circle Line here in London (refer to my previous rants).

But we did make it, and it was filled with wonderful things like pizza and gelato and piazzas:



As well as a pretty awesome cathedral:



We left Siena with plenty of time to get back to Florence to have an awkward amount of time to kill before actual Italian dinner (which is around 9). We decided to play checkers, but we tied (who ties in checkers?) so we played dominoes. We went up to a hill overlooking the city and checked out a real osteria - an Italian restaurant so real my guidebook couldn't even help translate the menu. Unfortunately, because of translation issues, we ended up with some pasta with egg sauce which wasn't good, and this was devestating.

The next day we met up with Meg and company and first attempted to find breakfast foods. Breakfast foods are hard to come by when all you want is an egg and cheese sandwich, so we settled for panini. We also saw a statue of David, which was cool, until I found out that it was a clever fake. Way to go, people of Florence. The gang then waited on line for 2 hours for the Uffizi Gallery, which is the oldest gallery in the universe (read: filled with more medieval art than you have ever seen. Ever.)

After our fill of the Annunciation and Immaculate Conception (not to mention a bunch of saints being killed), we went to church. Seemed like the right thing to do. The Duomo in Florence is probably my favorite building in the world. It's just so gorgeous:



It's got a Baroque dome (quick! somebody fix it!), which you can climb to the top of - it's only 463 stairs - nothing for us Ithaca College students. Unfortunately, we were not prepared for barred passages:



And steep stairways of doom:



But, in the end, we got to the top and we were very happy (although breathless):



And there was feasting, and celebrating, and hanging out with Japanese tourists.

We sledded back to the bottom (no lie) and went off on a quest for wine. After that we paid the small fortune required to catch a train to Rome (which is an hour long so therefore must cost the same as a plane ride) and lived another day in another blog entry that will be coming eventually.

Firenze Pictures