We had no plans for today other than get here, find our hotel, and walk around. I like Florence better than Rome already. Much less chaotic, much smaller, cleaner.
The Duomo
Fake David, original location
Ponte Vecchio, built in 1345, has buildings hanging off it. Not destroyed in WWII.
Overlooking Florence
We took the high speed train from Rome to Florence. The slow train takes almost 4 hours while the high speed train takes about an hour and a half. I think the cost was about 40% more but there would have been bigger savings if we bought our tickets in advance. We didn’t buy in advance for the trip because we wanted some flexibility in our schedule. The train hit 245 km/h (a little over 150 mph).
Leaving in an hour or two by train from Rome to Florence.
Last night was the worst dinner in Rome. We went to a place in the Rick Steves book. I ordered pizza, Denise ordered gnocchi. We were the only two people in the place when we placed the order. It took about 20 minutes to get my pizza (should have taken 5). I’m halfway done with my burnt flavorless pizza when they finally bring Denise’s gnocchi, which we had to remind them about. It was luke warm at best, and tasted really bad. Don’t go to Bar Firenze at Via Firenze 33.
Tonight’s dinner was at an Irish pub. I had Italian sausage (more like ground sausage flattened into a long narrow patty) and Denise had a salad. It was good.
And every night we’ve had gelato from La Martorana, about a block from our hotel. Tasty and well priced. Via Torino 129.
Villa d’Este is in the town of Tivoli. I had used Google maps to plot out the walking directions from the train station. We followed the directions, then must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, the street names didn’t match where I thought we were on the map. So I enabled the GPS. Oops, we were not where I thought we were so we adjusted course and continued. We get to the destination, but that’s not the entrance, it’s just a fence at the back of the villa. So we kept going. I don’t know how many times we doubled back, but we eventually found the entrance. It took an hour and a half to get from the train station to the villa. When we left the villa at the end of our tour, it only took 15 minutes to make it back to the train station. We wanted to wander through the town anyway, and probably wouldn’t have seen so much of it if we hadn’t gotten lost. So it’s all good in the end. And, we stopped in some little shop for a sandwich for lunch and got a very tasty small pizza, about 6 or 7 inches in diameter, folded in half like a sandwich. Not near the tourist area by the villa, so instead of paying €5 each, we paid €2 total.
