2022-07-17: Venice to Florence

It was an early wake up this morning. Especially after the late night fireworks last night. We had to catch our train to Florence this morning. We got ourselves cleaned up, finished packing our suitcases, cleaned up the apartment, and headed out. We walked to the Rialto waterbus station which was about a 5 minute walk. We bought our water bus tickets to the train station and just as we picked them up, our water bus arrived. We hopped on the bus and were at the train station about 10 minutes later.

We were at the train station around 9:15am. Our train didn’t depart until 10:26am. We had received an email informing us they had moved us from car 3 to car 2 of the train, but all the documentation on the Trenitalia website still showed we were in car 3. We walked by a Trenitalia information booth where they confirmed we are in car 2 now. We continued on to the cafeteria in the train station and grabbed some breakfast. We parked ourselves at a table and enjoyed our breakfast.

We headed to the tracks at about 10:00am. They hadn’t assigned our platform yet so the kids found a spot to sit at the end of platform 5. A train pulled in to platform 5 a few minutes later. Darrell checked the status board again and it showed our train was at platform 5. What a coincidence! We grabbed our suitcases and boarded the train. We found our seats and settled in for the 2 hour train ride to Florence. The couple sitting across the aisle from us asked where we were from. We told them Calgary, and amazingly, they were too! They actually live in Parkland. They were getting off in Florence as well. What are the chances? The train ride was uneventful. The train made a few stops along way including in Bologna. We went through a number of tunnels around the Bologna area. We pulled into the Florence train station at about 12:40pm.

We had received an email from the host for our Florence apartment while on the train informing us the apartment was ready early. We were originally going to have to store our suitcases at the luggage storage service at the Florence train station until our apartment was ready. Now we could head straight to the apartment which makes things easier. We walked from the train station to the apartment passing the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. It was about a 15 minute walk but that was plenty long enough in over 35 degree heat. The next few days in Florence and Rome are going to be brutal with temperatures in the 35 to 40 degree range. It took us a couple of minutes to find the right entry door for the apartment. Once inside, we discovered the elevator in the building appears to be broken. Luckily, we’re only on the 2nd floor of the building.

We familiarized ourselves with the apartment. It is bigger than the apartment in Venice. Each of the kids have their own bedroom which is nice. There are also two bathrooms which will make everyone a little happier. We spent some time cooling down before heading into the heat again to find a late lunch/early dinner. The apartment is well situated just steps from Piazza della Signoria and a couple of blocks from Ponte Vecchio.

We picked a restaurant just down the street from our apartment. We started off with some bruschetta with mozzarella on top which was delicious. Patrick, Darrell, and Amanda ordered some pizza while Michael ordered a chicken cutlet with fries. The restaurant had misters along the patio fence which the boys thought was cool. We weren’t sitting in a spot where they would reach us though. Michael enjoyed watching one of the fountains in the piazza while eating. After finishing our meal, we went for a walk.

We walked over the Ponte Vecchio and to a supermarket that Amanda and Darrell had discovered last time they were in Florence. We are doing a tour to Cinque Terre tomorrow and we have to meet at 7:15am. We decided to grab some breakfast food at the market for a quick breakfast in the apartment before heading for the tour. We returned to the apartment to put the food away and cool down for a bit. Michael was dying for some gelato so we headed back out around 6:00pm to find some. We wandered a couple more blocks before returning to the apartment. Everyone was feeling pretty cooked from the heat of the day and the short sleep the night before. We relaxed in the apartment for the remainder of the evening and called it a night early as we have to be up extra early tomorrow morning.