April 9: On the road to Firenza (Florence)

We had no problem getting up, fed and packed before Emanuele came over to collect the last (extra) day’s lodging along with the Italian cell phone he lent us. We also left some money to contribute to the flood recovery effort and asked him to make sure it got to the right place. Then got on the road again.

I am starting to feel like an Italian driver. No line of cars on my tail anymore, and I’m pushing that little Toyota Yaris in front of me who’s slowing up too much in those hairpin turns.

Wuss!

The road to Florence is great. Autostrada all the way, first A12 along the coast, then cutting in on A11. The problem is when A11 ends.

In fairness to us, we did not have a city map. We did have a couple maps – from the hotel website and from Mapquest – showing the neighborhood. It’s just that none of the maps included the same roads, even though they purported to be of the same place.

We found the train station pretty quickly and knew that the hotel was supposed to be within 500 meters. You’d think that would be enough. This is the heart of old Firenze, though, in the heart of the tourist district. What look like roads on maps turn into tourist walking plazas. Or become one way. The wrong way.

On our third pass by the train station, we bore left and found the street that runs into ours. And then found ours. We wept for joy.

Our hotel was… confusing. There are two hotel front desks with different names on the same floor of the same building, right next to each other. Neither has the name of the hotel that we booked. But one has a sign saying to check into the hotel that we did book. Which is immediately above the other front desk office. The room was a “quad,” meaning a very saggy double bed for me and Judy and a couple singles for Aaron and Liz, respectively. We were in an old building in a truly prime location on Via Fiume, right at the Piazza della Stazione, two blocks due north of the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella and about 3 blocks northwest of the Basilica di San Lorenzo. The massive Cathedrale di Santa Maria del Flore (the Duomo) is just another two blocks beyond the Basilica de San Lorenzo.

The elevator in our hotel: Hotel Stefania (or pick a name). We thought it was cool.

When we checked in, a service came and took our car to God knows where, and unfortunately we left the Lonely Planet in the back seat. So we went to the information center – closed for the day-after-Easter holiday – and then wandered down to the Duomo and kind of around the area, but without any clear purpose. Eventually we bought a city sightseeing tour, which ended up being a bad deal since we were so late in the day and got very little use out of it… but at least we were able to kind of orient ourselves. Afterwards, I wasn’t feeling so great so came back to the room to catch up with this blog while the others went out for food.