Today, we were checking out of Rome and heading to Florence. Our train ride to Florence was at 9:50am from Termini and would take approximately 90 minutes for the roughly 220 km distance to Florence. Since it was our first train ride in Italy, we decided to play it safe and be in the station by 9:15am. The fact that the station was just a few minutes walk away from the hotel definitely made it easier for us. At the station, we could see kids and young women offering to help tourists with directions to their trains. We were very wary / cautious about pickpockets and thieves, so we never locked eyes with any of them. However, as we were making our way to our coach, a lady approached me and asked me which coach we were looking for. Without thinking, I responded with our coach number and she took it as an agreement to use her service to help us. She accompanied us to the train and helped lift one of our suitcases into the train. Inside the coach, she was obviously asking for some kind of payment and I gave her one Euro, which I felt was more than adequate for her efforts. She seemed very upset and said that she was expecting 5 Euros. I refused but she was very persistent, repeating ‘5 Euro’ over and over. I was very sure I wasn’t going to pay her even one more penny, so I just turned away, being careful to keep my hands close to my pockets, just in case! After she left in a huff, Sahana kept looking back towards where our suitcases were stowed to see if she would come back and exact revenge on the nasty tourists by taking away their baggage!
The train started on time and we settled in our seats for the short journey to Florence. The train stops only once just outside Rome (Rome Tiburtina) before flying non-stop to Florence. The countryside was really nice with large expanses of green fields and farms on hillsides, valleys and plains. There were lots of mountains that we went through in the form of long tunnels. Once he was about 5 km outside Rome Tiburtina, the train accelerated rapidly to reach its top speed of about 220 km/h and stayed at that speed all the way till about 10 km outside Florence. At that speed, tunnels would routinely be around 3-5 minutes long which means that they were all about 12-15 km in length. Strangely, just outside Florence, the train stopped for almost 10 min waiting for some kind of clearance (signal, platform). We finally arrived at Florence Santa Maria Novella station about 10 minutes late. We knew that our hotel (Grand Hotel Baglioni) was very near to the station but we didn’t think that we could actually see it as soon as we exited! There was a large piazza / square / circle right in front of the station and our hotel was just across on the other side of it. We checked in to our rooms and made plans for the rest of the day. The hotel is actually a very old building that has probably been restored at some point of time. But, the interior decor has been retained, giving it a very nice old-world charm. The rooms were far, far bigger than our rooms in Rome, in fact, even bigger than the average hotel room in the US. Some minor nitpicks were that the walls appeared to be paper-thin and the room temperature could not be set above 21 deg C. The bathrooms were also exquisite with a bathtub-cum-shower In the bathtub, we had a handheld shower, the regular faucet and an overhead shower with various modes of operation. All in all, a nice 3 days to look forward to although we didn’t plan to spend much of it in our rooms.
After resting for a few minutes in our rooms, we decided to go sightseeing to the places we could walk to. We started off with the Duomo but first, lunch! There was a pizzeria / ristorante just outside the Duomo so we decided to finish our lunch there. While we were waiting, we noticed that there was a long line to get into the “Dome”. One of the tourists waiting in line said that he had been waiting for about 15 min and the line had moved a bit. We estimated it would take more than an hour to get in and another hour (at least) to climb up the ~450 steps to the top, so we decided to finish the other sights we’d planned to see before coming back to the Duomo.
Next, we headed to the Piazza Della Signoria where the Palazzo Vecchio is located. There are also some nice statues (David) / fountains (Neptune). We walked into the Palazzo Vecchio and did a very quick tour of the inside which is a museum of sorts.
We had tickets to the Uffizi Gallery at 3:30pm and we had a bit of time to go for that, so we walked to the Ponte Vecchio which is a famous bridge there. It’s a bit strange because there are houses built on the bridge and the houses are mostly shops that sell all kinds of gold(?) jewellery. There are many other bridges across the Arno river but the Ponte Vecchio is the most well-known of them. We spent a few minutes there and then headed to the Uffizi museum. We rested there for a while and then picked up our tickets at the assigned time. The Uffizi is a bit like the Louvre or the one in London in the sense that there are several rooms connecting to each other in a virtually endless matrix and it’s difficult to plan out an efficient itinerary that covers all of them. There are several paintings and sculptures from different periods in history. We had only allotted about 90 minutes for this, so we quickly went through as many rooms as possible and finished around 4:45pm. Next, we decided to walk to Piazza Michelangelo. The problem with maps is that they give you a 2D view of the directions, so we really were not prepared for what we saw when we started walking towards Piazza Michelangelo. The square was located about a 1000ft above the rest of Florence. My feet were aching by then and I really did not want to climb all the way up there. But, thanks to Sahana and her cajoling/prodding/persistence, I decided to at least try doing the climb slowly. At one point during the climb up, a young guy (around 20) accosted us and asked us if would be willing to sign a sheet of paper to show our support for their anti-drug petition. He said that he used to do drugs at one time and was now clean for some x years. All the while, he was trying to be charming / funny (saying Namaste, guessing where in India we were from, etc.). We knew he was also going to expect a donation although he said that it was completely optional. Anyway, thanks to the kids saying that it would indecent to walk away without any donation, we shelled out 2 Euros for the anti-drug cause. I’m not sure if the guy promptly went away and got his daily fix! We continued our climb after that brief respite and reached the top. That’s when I forgot my aching feet and was glad that I had steeled myself and continued with the climb.The view from the Piazza Michelangelo was absolutely stunning.
It was the early evening hour (around 6pm) and it was a cool, cloudy day. The entire city of Florence lay below us with the Arno and its bridges and the Duomo standing out in the skyline. There was a wide staircase leading down from the square and there was a street musician playing a guitar and singing famous songs. There was a crowd sitting on the steps, listening to him and applauding at the end of each song. The singer had a thick Italian accent which made his rendering of the songs a bit funny but it was still fun to listen and view the surrounding landscape.
After resting for about half an hour, we decided to head back down. On the way, we stopped at a gelateria for some gelato (Name?). After that, we walked back across the river towards our hotel. It was too late to go to the Duomo, so we went back to the hotel to rest.
At the hotel, we renewed our quest for a Mexican restaurant (!!) and found one which was a little more than a kilometre away. While we were walking there, we realised that the map may tell us how to get to a certain place but cannot tell us how seedy the areas are that the roads go through. We found ourselves in some pretty shady neighbourhoods but we persisted. Finally, we found the restaurant that we were seeking and settled down to have a pre-Father’s Day dinner. Ashwin and I had Coronas to go with our burritos. There was a live World Cup soccer game on TV but people were not as noisy / rowdy as they would probably have been if it was a match involving Italy. The menu had a decent number of vegetarian options but the burritos that we chose were stuffed with too much cheese and weren’t much like the ones we’re used to (Tex-Mex ones) in the US. Anyway, it was still a decent meal and we ended the day, as usual, with full stomachs!
The train started on time and we settled in our seats for the short journey to Florence. The train stops only once just outside Rome (Rome Tiburtina) before flying non-stop to Florence. The countryside was really nice with large expanses of green fields and farms on hillsides, valleys and plains. There were lots of mountains that we went through in the form of long tunnels. Once he was about 5 km outside Rome Tiburtina, the train accelerated rapidly to reach its top speed of about 220 km/h and stayed at that speed all the way till about 10 km outside Florence. At that speed, tunnels would routinely be around 3-5 minutes long which means that they were all about 12-15 km in length. Strangely, just outside Florence, the train stopped for almost 10 min waiting for some kind of clearance (signal, platform). We finally arrived at Florence Santa Maria Novella station about 10 minutes late. We knew that our hotel (Grand Hotel Baglioni) was very near to the station but we didn’t think that we could actually see it as soon as we exited! There was a large piazza / square / circle right in front of the station and our hotel was just across on the other side of it. We checked in to our rooms and made plans for the rest of the day. The hotel is actually a very old building that has probably been restored at some point of time. But, the interior decor has been retained, giving it a very nice old-world charm. The rooms were far, far bigger than our rooms in Rome, in fact, even bigger than the average hotel room in the US. Some minor nitpicks were that the walls appeared to be paper-thin and the room temperature could not be set above 21 deg C. The bathrooms were also exquisite with a bathtub-cum-shower In the bathtub, we had a handheld shower, the regular faucet and an overhead shower with various modes of operation. All in all, a nice 3 days to look forward to although we didn’t plan to spend much of it in our rooms.
After resting for a few minutes in our rooms, we decided to go sightseeing to the places we could walk to. We started off with the Duomo but first, lunch! There was a pizzeria / ristorante just outside the Duomo so we decided to finish our lunch there. While we were waiting, we noticed that there was a long line to get into the “Dome”. One of the tourists waiting in line said that he had been waiting for about 15 min and the line had moved a bit. We estimated it would take more than an hour to get in and another hour (at least) to climb up the ~450 steps to the top, so we decided to finish the other sights we’d planned to see before coming back to the Duomo.
After resting for about half an hour, we decided to head back down. On the way, we stopped at a gelateria for some gelato (Name?). After that, we walked back across the river towards our hotel. It was too late to go to the Duomo, so we went back to the hotel to rest.
At the hotel, we renewed our quest for a Mexican restaurant (!!) and found one which was a little more than a kilometre away. While we were walking there, we realised that the map may tell us how to get to a certain place but cannot tell us how seedy the areas are that the roads go through. We found ourselves in some pretty shady neighbourhoods but we persisted. Finally, we found the restaurant that we were seeking and settled down to have a pre-Father’s Day dinner. Ashwin and I had Coronas to go with our burritos. There was a live World Cup soccer game on TV but people were not as noisy / rowdy as they would probably have been if it was a match involving Italy. The menu had a decent number of vegetarian options but the burritos that we chose were stuffed with too much cheese and weren’t much like the ones we’re used to (Tex-Mex ones) in the US. Anyway, it was still a decent meal and we ended the day, as usual, with full stomachs!
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