Florence

Day 1

Turns out, there was a regional train to Florence from La Spezia, so I didn't need a seat reservation. I just hopped on, and we were off.

I was incredibly sedentary my first day, and sat around the hostel. Not because I was lazy, but because I had grabbed a STACK of brochures from the front desk, and was trying to figure out which daytrips I wanted to take. I eventually settled on three (described below), bit the bullet, and made around 250 euro of charges to my card. I just about melted.

Anyway, after I made the decisions, I wandered the city a bit, then crossed the Arno to eat dinner at Piazza Pitti. On the way back, I stopped to grab some shots of the sun setting over the Arno.

Day 2

OH LORD THE RUNNING.

I spent pretty much this entire day running around doing errands. First I ran to the train station to reserve a seat to Rome, but the computers were down, so they couldn't. Next, I ran to the tourist office next door to have the tour pick me up at my hostel (otherwise, I'd have to be up at 6 to make it to the departure point near the train station in time). Thankfully, that wasn't a problem.

Next, hostels. I had to split my time in Florence between two hostels, but since the desk at the second hostel was only open while I was on my tour, I had to run and grab my key and check in early. So, I booked it across town to my hostel (funnily enough, it was next door to where I had eaten the night before), grabbed the keys, paid up, and left.

After that, I swung by the hostel I had been staying in and made sure they wouldn't throw my stuff away if I left it after check out (so I didn't have to take it on the tour with me the following morning). They said 'no problem,' so I ran back to the train station. Thankfully, it was up and running again, so I grabbed my ticket.

By this point, it was around dinner time, so I grabbed dinner and headed home. I didn't get to see many sights in Florence, but, then again, I've seen them all already. Only thing I still haven't seen was the Uffizi, which wasn't high on my list anyway.