These messages are from a series of e-mails written after our vacation to Paris and Italy, in the summer of 2002. The events recounted in this internet diary occurred on Friday, June 28.
--Jim McQueen
Friday was the day we were moving from Venice to Florence. We had one last breakfast at the hotel -- a continental breakfast with a croissant, yogurt, and coffee. (The coffee in Italy wasn't as good as Paris. A pity, they invented Cappuccino.) After we packed, we walked to the Amex office to cash the remainder of our traveler's checks. (Far less convenient that credit cards -- I'll bet that in 10 years that business has disappeared.) We let the kids feed the pigeons in Piazza San Marco one last time, grabbed our luggage, and took a vaporetto to the train station. (That was easy, after knowing how the system works.)
We got on board a 12:33 PM train to Florence and Rome. The schedule was easy to understand, but it turned out we had made another big error. We had Eurail passes that covered our train fare, but we didn't pay extra for reservations on a specific train. The reservations are sold separately, and cost 15 Euros per reservation -- 75 Euros for the five of us, and another 75 Euros when we left Florence. There were trains scheduled every half hour, we figured we could take a chance on missing a train or two if they were full up.
And we made it onto the first one we tried. When it left Venice, there were still plenty of empty seats. But at the first intermediate stop, an Italian couple got on and asked us to move -- they had reserved the seats we were in. We moved, there were still open seats, but I found a route map and counted -- we still had five more intermediate stops before Florence. I worried for the rest of the four hour trip.
A while later, I overheard some American tourists talking about train fares and reservations. I asked one of them about it, and she seemed knowledgeable. She showed me that the printed train schedule that accompanied our Eurail passes had a little coded "R" next to the listing for our train -- that meant that reservations were mandatory. (This info wasn't listed on the schedule posted on the internet, or on the schedule posted at the station.) She warned me that when they asked for our tickets, we'd have to pay then for reservations, and an extra 9 Euro "supplement" for buying reservations on the train.
And a little while later, when the conductor came through, that's how it worked. The only difference was, the "reservations" we bought on the train didn't reserve anything for us -- if people boarded later who were entitled to our seats, we'd still have to give them up. Again, I worried about that possibility for the rest of the trip. It was a huge relief to finally get to Florence still sitting in our seats.
So, we were pretty stressed and tired when we got off the train. I'd booked a hotel less than a block from the train station, and we rolled our luggage over with no trouble. The staff at the front desk was friendly and efficient. When we got upstairs, the rooms were small, but air conditioned. Our room had a fair-sized balcony overlooking the neighborhood rooftops. Sean and Scott planted themselves in front of the TV with no intention of moving. (At that point, it was European MTV, but later that day I found "The Nanny" dubbed in to Italian -- "La Tata". They did a pretty good job of casting voices.)
After a small rest, Nancy and I made our way back to the train station. I waited in line about a half hour to buy reservations for our final trip to Rome -- Susan had already made a reservation for her return to Venice.
Later, Nancy and I finally began to roam around a little to see Florence. We hadn't really planned our visit to see the many sights there, it was more of a convenient base to stay while we visited Pisa the next day. We wandered at random, looking for an internet cafe to write home from. Near our hotel we found several streets had been closed to traffic to set up a large flea market. We passed stalls full of leather coats, summer dresses, tourist trinkets, a little of everything. We didn't buy anything, and in the busy crowd, we kept a close eye on Nancy's purse.
Only a couple of blocks away we found the historic center of Florence, the Duomo. (Looking that up just now to check my spelling, I learned that it is the third largest Catholic cathedral in the world, after St. Peter's in the Vatican and St. Paul's in London.) We didn't go inside, and the marble exterior seemed a jumble of clashing styles.
On the way back to the hotel, we finally found an internet cafe. Nancy was smug when they gave her the student discount as a visiting professor.
At the hotel, I asked the guy at the front desk for a recommendation for a quiet, easy-going restaurant. He sent us a couple blocks away to the Trattoria Angelino. It was the perfect place for us -- informal, friendly, cheap, and quite good food. Nancy and I learned another treat -- they had a dessert that consisted of biscotti with a glass of sweet dessert wine. The trick was to soak the biscotti in the wine before each bite -- delicious. (I made a mental note to show this combination to the people at Milano's Restaurant in Glendale when we got home. I tried to, and discovered that this item has been on their dessert menu all along.)
Love,
Jim