Day 25: Traveling (date: 6/28/2011)

My sunglasses have been successfully retrieved!!! Hooray! I spent most of today on various different trains. Christine has to be in Milan by 8:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays so we got up bright and early to so we could catch the 5:40 train into Brescia. Well it was just our luck that the 5:40 train had some sort of problem with it so we ended up taking the 6:40 bus and Christine ended up missing most of her class. It all worked out in the end though.

I had to take one of the faster, more expensive trains in order to end up in Florence at a decent hour. For whatever reason, my ticket didn’t have a seat assignment so when I got the train I just found an empty car and sat down. About 45 minutes into the trip one of the ticket checkers came in stamped my ticket, rambled something off in lightning fast Italian and then walked out. About 30 seconds later she came back in and yelled at me. I told her I didn’t speak English and she said I had to get out of that car because the train was full and I didn’t have a seat so I had to move. I was thoroughly confused as the train was clearly not full because I was surrounded by 5 empty seats, but it seems she cleared a whole bunch of people out and then locked the doors behind her. I wandered down the train until I found a car with people in it and an empty seat and sat down. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to do that, but she didn’t come back and yell at me so I figured I was in the clear.

Despite the train madness, I got to Genova around 11:30 and headed to the restaurant to get my sunglasses back. The guy was very nice and I thanked him profusely for holding on to them for me. I then went to the station to hop the train to La Spezia and then on to Florence. Hours and hours on the train. I slept for most of it given I only got about 3 hours of sleep the night before.

I got to Florence and, as is my wont, got lost trying to find the hostel. I literally walked right past it in my attempt to find it. I ended up calling Christine because everyone I asked seemed to have no idea where it was. I checked in and settled down for the night, trying to keep cool. The hostel is very warm and there’s no AC so it’s kind of like being back in Troy in August. Tomorrow, I will explore Florence (or Firenze as it’s called in Italian) more thoroughly.