Sunday, May 20, 2012

We were up early to get our bags down to the desk for transport by7AM. After breakfast we headed out for a walk. We retraced our steps to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II and found the Magic Gate that we missed on our first time through the park. The Magic Gate apparently has the code (or part of the code) for making gold. Sadly we weren’t able to break the code so we’ll have to come home! There were a lot of feral cats around the gate and the ruins of the fountain. I don’t know if this was an official cat sanctuary but the all looked quite at home.

We spent some time sitting on a bench in the park people watching. With so many people around it is an easy thing to do here – if you are lucky enough to find a spot to sit.

After lunch we headed en masse to the train station. We didn’t get window seats but I felt I had a good view of the countryside. There were a lot of tunnels along the way which was a surprise to us. I had trouble staying awake – the ride was very comfortable but not as high speed as we had expected. Our tour coordinator had trouble finding a seat. The train we were on had to be substituted at the last minute because the regular train for the route wasn’t available due to the earthquake. We never found out whether it had been pressed into service, or had been delayed by the quake.

It was humid but dry when we left Rome and we could see it raining from the train as we got closer to Florence. When we got off the train we needed umbrellas for the walk to the hotel.

Our hotel arrival was chaotic as we were late arriving and lots of people needed to be assigned to rooms. Our first lecture and orientation to Florence started just a few minutes after check in. There is a lot to see here and not all of it is on the itinerary. It is good to know that we can come back during the week we are in Sienna – it isn’t far away.

There wasn’t much time between the lecture and dinner. The Internet connection is expensive and after some consideration we decided to pay for only one card for one device. In the meantime I’m writing my journal by hand and I will post it the next time we get a connection. After dinner we headed back to our room and had an early night.

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