To travel from Rome to Florence, we took the high speed rail train run by Italo. Since we bought our tickets months in advance, we got a great deal on seats in business class. What we didn’t know booking months in advance was that there was maintenance planned on the high speed track between Rome and Florence. A couple weeks before the trip, we received a notice that our train’s start time was changed from 10:20am to 8:20am. That basically meant the travel time was the same as the regular train. The upside was a more scenic route and travel at a speed where we could enjoy it.
In Italy, the platform for trains is usually announced about 15 minutes before the train arrives. In a station the size of Rome Termini with 32 platforms, that time frame is anxiety inducing. We stood in front of the departure board watching it refresh again, again, as 8:00am passed, then 8:05, then 8:10. We went through the ticket check to the other side to be closer to the platforms. Still nothing. Finally, at 8:15, a number popped up – 35 minute delay. With a sigh, we went off to find a place to sit and wait.
We finally left Rome shortly before 9. The business class seats were really nice, with lots of room to store carry-on size luggage in the rack above and to stow smaller luggage below the seats. Attendants came by once with coffee/drinks and snacks (choices were crackers or a Twix bar) and several times to collect trash. The countryside was beautiful and the business class car was quiet and comfortable.
Despite the delay getting started, we actually arrived in Florence about 10 minutes early. Since it was too early to check into our Air BnB, we stored our luggage at the station and went out to find some lunch.
Immediately we could feel a different energy in Florence than in Rome. While Rome is full of tourists, in most places the streets and sidewalks are wide and able to accommodate the crowds. In Florence, the narrow irregular streets get full quickly, cars can only drive one way on most streets, and it’s all too easy to take a wrong step off the edge of the sidewalk or on a wayward cobblestone. At the same time, there is a vibrant sense of life and creativity all around, a meeting between the Renaissance and modern life.
Lunch was a perfect example of this. We stopped at a little shop called La Boite. The shop was located on a small piazza in a stone building that simultaneously felt old and new. The schiacciate (sandwich) menu was a line up of sandwiches named after celebrities – Mervin had a Denzel Washington and I had a Bob Dylan. There was a mix of locals and tourists and the staff switched between Italian and English seamlessly.
After lunch we wandered for a while among the Sunday crowds. There was a huge open air market of tourist goods and “leather” products surrounding il Mercato Centrale Firenze. We went inside the market and made a brief loop through the restaurant style food stalls, however it was completely packed and uncomfortably hot so we headed back out to the streets. We also caught our first site of the Duomo – we’ll come back there tomorrow.
Reviews for our Air BnB warned that it was up a steep hill, so we took a taxi to reach it. Riding a taxi through the Sunday crowds on narrow one-way streets was certainly an experience! We crossed a bridge to the other side of the river, then due to the one way streets had to take a convoluted route past Palazzo Pitti to wind up the hill and come back down from the top. I don’t think the taxi driver was playing us, there really was no simple way to get there. As we got out of the taxi, we were glad for our choice. It was a steep slope! Wheeling suitcases up would have been no fun at all.
The AirBnB owner was very friendly, meeting us at the house to let us in and introducing it to us. The house is over 1000 years old, and was once connected to other units in the row houses. Galileo Galilei once lived in the apartment upstairs and one unit over, commemorated by paintings on the facade of that house. While the inside was tastefully renovated with a modern kitchen and bathroom, there was an undeniable sense of age and history. No wall was straight and the floor sloped and dipped under the vinyl laminate boards. Out the back window was a view of a cute little garden although we didn’t have access to it.
Once we were settled in, we walked down the hill to the neighborhood grocery store and picked up “heat and eat” lasagna slices, bread, and salad. Trekking back up the hill, we had to take a brief pause halfway to catch our breath. We heated the lasagna in the oven and enjoyed a quiet dinner. Experiences like this are why I enjoy Air BnBs, getting a chance to understand life in a neighborhood for a few days.