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.

In Cinque Terre, Headed to Florence today!

Hi all,

Sorry for being so behind. I've been in Cinque Terre (a series of five villages on the west coast of Italy, near La Spezia) for the past three days, and am headed to Florence in about 4 hours. Cinque Terre was one of my favorite places so far, so I'll definitely be uploading some posts about it, but for now, just a quick update.

Left Sean in Milan (he's back in the states by now), and caught the train to La Spezia, then a regional train from La Spezia to Riomaggiore, where I stayed all three nights. It's actually one of the smaller villages, which made finding a place to stay tricky (very few places would rent a room to just one person; most would require me to pay for two), but was really cool, as it meant I got to know the village pretty well, even though I visited two others as well. Anyway, it's absolutely beautiful here, so I got a ton of photos I'm really happy with.

Now, I'm off to Florence, which I'm going to use as a base to explore Tuscany for five days. Don't have any particular plans for what to see, though I'd like to go on a vineyard tour in Chianti. I figure I'll just head to the tourism office as soon as I get there and see what day trips I can book.

Anyway, off to catch a train!