Florence

So our time in Paris and Venice was awesome. We loved every minute and we were looking forward to Florence, but it was a disaster from the start. We feel bad about this because our neighbor's son told us that Florence was going to be our favorite...but ooooohhhhh noooo...it wasa not-a!
We got into the train station just fine, but after that it was all down hill. We got onto a public bus that we were told to take in the directions from the hotel. But Florence has such horrible street labeling that it is easy to get lost. So needless to say, we missed our stop and ended up going way out into the country where the bus just stopped. We were the only people left on the bus. I asked the driver in Italian if she spoke English, she rudely shouted "No!", waved me off, and turned away making it obvious that she wasn't going to entertain any more questions. So we ended up just sitting there for awhile and finally she started the bus again and we were headed back to the city. We were able to ask someone who got on the bus where to get off and we finally found our hotel. Did it get better then? Nope! The girl at the hotel was arguing with someone on the phone for about 20 minutes while we just stood there waiting for her to acknowledge us. Then we found out our room was on the top floor of a very tall building..you guessed it...no elevator, just stairs to lug our bags up. The room was dissapointing and the bathroom smelled. It was also very strange...the toilet and the sink were in the room with a a drain in the floor and a shower knozzle sticking out of the wall. The shower was just that and it got everything wet when you showered.
We tried to get over it by taking a nap and then going for a walk to the ponte Eveckio...I don't know how to spell it...it is some famous bridge. I'll put a picture taken of Amy and I on it. That pretty much wrapped up the first day...getting lost, taking a nap, and going for a stroll...oh I forgot, the streets were more narrow than any other place we had been and the scooters, buses, and cars all seemed to be out to hit us. It is unreal how badly people drive over here. I haven't seen a speed limit sign for 10 days. Oh yea, it is also the stinkiest city. As we were on our stroll we were frequently accosted with the nasty aroma of sewage. So needless to say, the first day was not nice.
The second day we were signed up to do a tour of the Accademia museum and other Florence museums, but Amy really wanted to switch to a tour of the Tuscany countryside by going to Sienna and San Gimannono. We are so glad we did this trip. It was incredible. Driving through Tuscanny is beautiful. So many vineyards and olive trees leading up to these beautful villas. When we finally arrived in Sienna we were in awe of the architectural history and diversity. We walked on roads that pilgrims have walked on for centuries. The same rocks that people strode upon during the middle ages, we saw amazing works of art by Renaissance artists, and much more. They have this horse race twice a year in the plaza that we will tell you about when we get back. We took a thousand pictures we will share when we return. Anyway, after our wonderful time in Sienna, we then traveled to San Gimannono. this is a middle ages town completely presereved. It has castle walls, towers, and all. It is of course completely touristized with little shops and what not, but it is also a very cool experience. So our second day in Florence was great, because we got out of town!
Our third and final day in florence we decided to beat the crowds and get to the Accedemia museum early. It was supposed to open at 8:15 but it didn't open until almost 10:30 due to an employee meeting...then after standing in line for almost three hours we found out the museum workers were going on strike. Apparently they strike all the time in this region of the world. So we didn't get to see David which really bummed me out and we had spent our entire morning standing in a line. Discouraged we headed back to a famous square area with a replica of David, but is wasn't the same thing. We did have an overpriced lunch and then headed back to our hotel since we only had a few more hours until we left. We decided to go to the train station early to see if we could get out of town. It had just been such a horrible experience. It was so overcrowded, stinky, hot, and uncomfortable that we just wanted to leave. Our gamble at the train station didn't pay off. We had to wait for our train. After a couple more hours of sweating and waiting, we finally got onto our train. Thinking we had cleared the mess that is Florence, we sank into our seats and started to relax. Then the conductor came along and asked for our tickets. He studied them more than any of the other conductors and then informed us that we had failed to write in the date of our travel and that we were being fined 50 Euros...that translates into almost 75 dollars. After the day we had I turned into an ugly American traveler. I dropped a few curse words and wasn't very nice. I fumed all the way to Rome, but I'm glad to say that our two days in Rome have been fantastic and i will be happy to inform you of them in our next blog. We do leave rome tomorrow, but we will try to squeek out a blog before we leave. Take care and sorry for the novel. Dave