First off I want thank everyone who read Part 1. It’s been awhile since I’ve written such a long blog/written a blog at all and I really love getting comments/feedback. It’s nice to know people are reading!

Day 4: On Our Way to Florence...sorta
So the night before we head to Florence, Tae and I repack our bag to include some of the items we bought in Rome. I try on the shoe I bought the day before and realize that I was given the wrong box! Arg, that meant that we couldn’t just go straight to the Rome train station and head to Florence. We’d have to go back to the Spanish Steps (WITH our luggage) and then leave for Florence once I was done with the exchange. At this point we’re just really ready to move on to the next part of the trip, and I think I was more annoyed with having to make the detour then he was.

The next day (now day 4) we head to the Spanish Steps via the hotel shuttle bus and the Rome Metro. We stop by a bench and Tae sends me on my way with the shoes. He gives me the heads up that if anything happens to either one of us to go straight to the police. Just a precaution since once again we’re going to be separated for at (hopefully) the most 30 minutes. I go on my way, a bit scared to be separated in a pretty unknown location, but as I go toward the crowd of tourists I found comfort being among them. I moved quickly, got the exchange taken care of and headed quickly back to Tae. We hadn’t eaten anything yet, so he went to get something and thankfully it was a pretty tasty egg/cheese sandwich (yes I actually liked it!) NOW we are finally on our way! We take the Metro to the main rail station hub and get a ticket to Florence. We took the slightly faster EuroStar train and got to Florence in about 2 and ½ hours.

When we get off the train we head toward the taxi cab area. We give the woman in the taxi cab the print out we have of the hotel address. She looks at the city/region of Florence and sees that is it is in Vinci. She immediately says to us, “O no! Vinci is an hour away from here. That’s going to be very expensive.” We are stunned and don’t know what to say. She continues, “I really don’t recommend taking a taxi there. I think you should try to cancel and find a hotel here in Florence.” We decide to get out of the cab. We’re appreciative of her help and honesty, but we have no idea what to do! We both know that we can’t cancel the hotel at this point and just decide to go to the hotel (no matter where it ends up landing us!) We go to the bus station, but realize it doesn’t go there. It’s a city center bus. After asking questions to people that really led nowhere we decide to head back to the taxi stand area and just take a cab. The cab drivers we approach are nice and say the same thing about how long the taxi ride is going to be. They suggest taking a regional train that would be a lot less expensive. We didn’t want to deal with the hassle in a city we just arrived in, so we just go ahead with the taxi ride even though we know it will be expensive. We get in and I can tell Tae is very frustrated and unhappy about the situation. I feel bad because I feel very much that it is my fault that this happened. I worry that I might have made the same mistake for our hotel in Venice. But I also feel it was expedia.com’s fault for not providing hotels that really were IN Florence (city center). Tae doesn't blame me for anything but I feel quite responsible. When we finally get to the hotel we see that it looks very mod and a hotel probably geared toward business travelers. We get in the room and feel relieved but I start crying because I feel so bad. Tae says it's not my fault and that maybe we should call expedia.com to find out happened. I decide to call my brother later in the evening to check the hotel details online FIRST before calling Expedia. It’s around 4-5 in the afternoon now, and we decide to try to get our travel woes behind us by checking out if there was something to see around this little city. We talk to the lady in the hotel lobby and she suggests the city center of a town called, Empoli which is about a 10-15 minute walk. She also mentions to us that in Empoli there's the train station that takes you into Florence in about 20-30 minutes for about 2 Euro 1 way. We are happy when we hear this and decide to take that travel suggestion for the next day. In the meatime, we head to Empoli. As we walked through the town’s streets, we see that is quaint, with cobble stone roads, no graffiti, and lined with stores on it’s main streets. I think at this particular point Tae was more in awe of this little discovery than I was! He figured it was a pretty affluent residential neighborhood as almost all the stores were at least mid-level European brand names. He’s like this is a real Italian city, no tourists, and no-one who speaks English. We went into a few of the clothing stores and ended up getting a few things. We wanted to get dinner but only found just a few restaurants. But in the place we ended up going to the hostess didn’t speak a word of English but she was super nice and patient as we tried to communicate with one another. We end up each getting thin crust pizzas that were pretty good! We of course had Italian beers with it . All in all, this day ends on a good note. What we’re calling the blessing in is disguise . And Empoli our favorite little Italian city that no tourist (or very few) have ever been to and have ever heard of!

P.S. I did call my brother later that evening. I told him to look at the comments on the place and 1 visitor did say the place was a distance from Florence but close to Empoli (sounds like he or she may have been in the same situation as us). We decide not to call expedia as the visitor comment was an indicator that it wasn't that close to Florence. Plus we would have never seen the town of Empoli and are just glad everything in the end turned out okay.

Streets of Empoli

Streets of Empoli 2

Day 5: We head BACK to Florence
Before heading out, I heed the advice of my travel guide to book a reservation to the Uffizi Meseum as the wait in the regular line can be long. We reserve a time and head out. I remember someone saying to me that I can do Florence in 1-2 days at most, so as we go through the day we realize we want to do a side trip to Siena (which is where we went the next day) instead of coming back to Florence again. When we get off the rail train we walk toward the Uffizi. As we get close to the museum we see the large number of tourists. There are some statues outside of the museum that are quite lovely (see pictures below). We see the regular museum entrance line and are glad to have gotten reservations. Like most museums this place is filled with Renaissance paintings. The sad thing is that I can’t share any of them with you because we were not allowed to take pictures at all (not even without a flash!) But the highlight was definitely seeing the famous “Birth of Venus” painting which was definitely beautiful to see in person. I also remember enjoying the work of Leonardo da Vinci. His style is just so unique and probably more definitive to me than just any other painting in his period. He just seemed like such a pioneer in artistic expression. The below images I found on the internet were among my favorites. After leaving museum we walk along streets that are filled with designer clothing stores. We get the feeling that Florence has more shopping than Rome! We do some window shopping and then decide to get some lunch. We look to the guide and head to the wine bar that is recommended in the area. We find what we think is the place pretty quickly but we get thrown off by the fact that this place looks more like a wine store than a wine bar. As we peek inside we see tables against the far wall. We ask if they serve food and they say yes so we realize we are in the right place. We’re the only people in the place and as we look at the menu we get excited about the hearty soup that the book recommended getting. Tae gets the barley soup and sausage on bread (where the sausage is actually more like a spread). I get the bread tomato soup, and a cheese plate, and we both of course get some wine. This was my favorite meal (and probably Tae’s 2nd favorite). Although I have to say I LOVED Tae’s barley soup (SOOO yummy BEST barley soup I have EVER had) and sausage spread better than my soup. The cheese was great. It was different types of pecorino romano (my favorite type of cheese). The wine was great – regional of course! After lunch we head toward Florence’s Duomo where we decide to climb the stair case all the way too the top. Yea that was quite a workout! Plus the stairs got kinda scary at certain points, with the curving stair case getting me dizzy and the stair case being both the staircase to go up AND down. When we head to the top we obviously have a great view of Florence from above. After leaving the Duomo, we decide to do some shopping before we get dinner and then head back to the hotel. For dinner we try to go to a recommended restaurant again, but we have trouble finding the street. We give up trying to look for the place and head toward the train station hoping to find a place near the station before heading back to Empoli. We find a restaurant that seems to have a lot of tourists. The food ends up being okay, but not great. Soon after dinner we get on the next regional train to Empoli. Now we’re pros at train transportation aren’t we! We head back to the hotel, feeling good about our day in Florence.

Outside the Uffizi Museum
Birth of Venus
Adoration of the Magi - in Uffizi Museum by da Vinci
Annunciation by da Vinci
Famour door by the Duomo
Me from the top of the Duomo
Florence's Duomo

Still to come...Part 3 (the final days)
The trip ends with our day in Siena (while still at the hotel in Empoli), and then our 2 days in Venice. So that will be the third and final blog about this trip. Just an FYI .