Day 7 - Florence I

Yesterday was our last full day in Rome, so this morning at 8:15am we all piled into cabs to get to the Termini railway station to take a train the Florence. Cam, Erik, Sean, and I got into a taxi and were the first ones to leave from the hotel. We got there pretty quickly, but we were dropped off on a side of the station that was really long, so we decided since we didn’t know where to meet, that we would go wait by the ticket office on that side. After a while of not seeing anyone, I decided that I would walk up and down the side to see if anyone had arrived yet, so the others waited with our bags. I walked up and down that side about 3 or 4 times, and we still had yet to see anyone. We started to really wonder where everyone else was, so we all grabbed our stuff and went over to the terminals to see if we could find them. We walked up and down that area a couple of times without seeing anyone, so we looked at the train terminal signs to see which one went to Florence. We found on that did, but none of our group members were around, so we kept on looking. Then we decided to wait at the entrance of this area closest to where we were dropped off. Then Sean and I went to try to use a pay phone to call Dr. Erdogmus since we had been here quite a while already. The payphone was a pain in the butt to use, and it ate about 3 Euros before we finally got it figured out and were able to get a hold of her! Then we started walking around trying to figure out where she was and then we found her finally. Apparently, there is another side of the Termini station that is where all the taxis drop off people, so everyone else got dropped off at this location and we were dropped off on another side. It was a relief to finally find the rest of our group. Then we waited until we could get onto the train we got tickets for and made it on without too much trouble. It was my first time on a train like this, so it was kind of exciting. The ride was pretty smooth and the trains go pretty fast. We finally got out of the huge city of Rome, and got to see some of the countryside. It was quite beautiful. There were a lot of hills and we got to see some of the agriculture that is in Italy. There were a lot of vineyards, sheep, and grains in the fields, pastures, and valleys. In a lot of cases, there were houses that were just built on top of the hills out here which is much different from what we had seen so far. It was a pretty relaxing trip except for the fact that the pressure in my ears was getting messed up when we would go through tunnels and such.

After arriving in Florence, we walked to the hotel carrying our bags which was not that fun for me since I have to carry all my bags because none of them are rolling. Then we went and ate lunch at a sandwich shop, which was really good and cheaper than most of the other places we had been eating. Then we went to a Galileo Museum, where they had all sorts of displays and such about different devices and tools used by the scientists of the time and many things Galileo discovered. They also happen to have a couple of his fingers and a thumb there at the museum, because when they moved his grave, someone decided to take these from it and put them into a museum for everyone to see.

After this, we then went up to the roof of our hotel and Dr. Erdogmus showed us the view we have: we are right next to Brunelleschi’s Dome! It is an incredible view of it to be so close. Then we went over to the church that it is on top of and walked up the many stairs in small staircases to the top of it. It gives a great view of the whole city of Florence. It is kind of in a flat valley area in between the hills that are all around. After we finished looking around there, we went around looking for a supermarket to buy water, and then finally found one. 

This is probably the most frustrating part about Italy is that you only can get bottled water at restaurants, and it is really expensive everywhere. The only way to get decent priced water is at the supermarket. Then we went back to the hotel and relaxed a little bit until we went out to wander around and find some supper. We finally found a nice place after walking around for a while, and I ordered what is apparently a very traditional dish here in Florence: ravioli with wild boar! It was really good, and it was especially good cause you really don’t get too much meat here, so any bit was good. After dinner we went, got gelato, and went back to the hotel. I just relaxed at the hotel and kept up to date on everything. It was an interesting day on our first traveling day in Italy.