Travelin Tarheel: Firenze

Following Rome, we travelled to Florence, about a 2 hr. train ride. That was the day I felt like I'd lost one of my six senses....

We arrived at the Rome train station to discover there was a "soppresso" beside our train information. I asked a policeman what that meant and was informed it meant,

"no train." Our train was cancelled. I saw a huge line forming in front of the Eurostar information desk and ran to get in it and figure out what to do. It was crazy chaos! A Eurostar employee would come out for a few minutes, people would crowd around him with all sorts of questions in all sorts of languages. He would get frustrated and announce something in Italian. I felt like I was battling against something (the crowd and getting another seat on another train) with my hearing gone or something! I'd have to ask people around me if they spoke English and they'd translate for me. Here's what I discovered: a train derailed on the track from Bologna to Florence and that was preventing any trains from going or coming. No one was sure if we'd even catch a train north at all that day. Once I found that out, I decided we should at least try and take the one train that was in the station, headed to Florence. I had no idea if our tickets would be valid or if we'd get thrown off. Oh well! So I finally found one last conductor, showed him our tickets, pointed to the train and said, "ok?" (I'm definitely becoming fluent!) He let us get on and we were able to make it to Florence finally!

On the way back, the same thing happened to us and our train was cancelled (yes, we never did get to actually take the trains we had actual tickets for). This time I was prepared and knew we could jump on another train headed to Rome. We hopped on, only to discover, mid route, we'd gotten on the train headed the opposite way, to Venice! While I've always wanted to go to Venice, I really wanted to make my flight back the the U.S. the next day. So, we got off at the next stop in Bolgona and ended up catching a train back to Rome. So, we got to add Bologna (or at least the train depot) to our list of places visited!

Enjoy some of the sights of Florence! It's definitely one of my favorite places I'd choose to live overseas...