Finishing Florence

We have said our farewells to Italy and are snuggled up in a Paris hotel at the moment in Montmartre. Karen is sitting out on our little balcony sketching, Dad is catching up on some shut-eye, and, well, I’m typing this instead of doing Fr. Maher’s homework. Finishing up Florence: The hostel dinner was great. We all ate too much, and had a good time trying to figure out what flavor the sorbet was until we realized it was labeled on the menu. Meh, guessing was fun too. After sleeping in we had a great day rambling around the city. We started off at the Mercato Centrale, kinda like a farmer’s market on steroids. We bought some dried fruit and nuts for candy before finding a great little sandwich shop mentioned in our guidebook. We weren’t brave enough to try the tripe, but Nerbone’s boiled beef and roast beef sandwiches were hearty, fresh, and satisfying. Karen liked the beef too. We then did some shopping among the repetitious but still popular stalls of leather, clothing, and mini Davids. Karen found a pretty linen dress and a belt that I can’t wait to see her wear. We walked over to the river to find a gelato place and were not disappointed with Gelateria de Neri. Dad and I had gorgonzola/nut with dark chocolate while Karen had stratticella and black cherry. It was quiet, few tourists, and the gelato was incredible. They also had a tv playing Top Gear, dubbed in Italian. Jeremy doesn’t sound nearly as snarky in Italian. While we were walking around, Karen and I darted across a street to take a photo – I avoided being hit by a dinky little purple car. All I could think of was, “…got run over by a crappy purple scion.” Luckily, that was not my fate, we didn’t have to say goodbye in 50 ways, but Karen and I had a good time telling some of Train’s lyrics to Dad afterwards. We dawdled across the river (caught a nice breeze on the bridge…better than air conditioning) and climbed up to Piazza Michelangelo for a great view. We also found this great little church, St. Minitias, that was everything an Italian church should be: free, full of art, cool, and peaceful. The medieval paintings and ceilings were all in beautiful condition, and we spent a beautiful few minutes praying and sitting in the cool church. We meandered back down the hill to find some dinner, and then back to our hostel to grab our bags and wait for the overnight train.

Finding the proper train car is harder than you might think. Things are not super well-labeled, you have about 5 minutes to get you and all your stuff off the platform and into the train before you’re left behind, and the cars are not consecutively numbered. After some shuffling up and down aisles and between cars we finally found our car – which had originally been numbered for 6 people on the outside, but only 4 on the inside. The 4 on the inside also didn’t include one of the numbers on our ticket. We got it straight about the same time our co-passenger arrived in Bologna. We talked to him in the morning after a night of bumping and rocking along in our respective bunks. He lives in Rome, was going to Paris. Karen says he reminded her of what a 40 year old Tarzan would look like: dreds, long beard, scruffy clothes. He spoke good Italian, French, and English, and we shared a little breakfast with him. He was interested in Alaska, so we talked about that a bit. Dad stared out the window, I read some Tess D’Ubervilles, and Karen napped some more until we got to Paris around 11 am.