Actual travel, the process of getting from point A (Toronto) to point D (Florence), when things go well, is rather boring to narrate, so I’ll keep it short(er). We started the day in our Toronto hotel, and after a great breakfast, made out way to the airport in a very cold rain. Given the rain, it was unfortunate that I remembered that I had left my credit cards in my car only after we had walked across the whole parking lot. I let the others go on while I jogged back and got them.

The Toronto airport was a breeze – no line at check-in, and a very minimal wait at security, which included pre-filling out US customs forms since we were flying into Boston. That was a huge blessing for us since we had a tight window in Boston to catch our next flight (one hour and forty minutes). Anyway, the end result of no lines in Toronto was that we waited at the gate for about three hours. Ooops.

Boston worked out as well – no customs to clear, and even though we had to change terminals, there was a walkway connecting the two terminals that only took about five minutes to walk. Boston also had a minimal security line, and so we made it to the gate with about an hour to spare before take-off.

The flight to Rome was uneventful, which is always good. Meredith graded and I played the computer game Civilization 5. Once in Rome, we cleared customs, got our luggage, and headed for the train station, where an airport official spotted me trying to figure out which way to go and took that as a chance to tell us about how we could get a van to Rome’s main train station for 15 euros each, which is more or less what the train costs, but with no wait. I was a bit skeptical, but not very alert, and since it sounded like more or less the same cost, we agreed.

Our driver was nice, and spoke decent English. He did try to convince us he could take us all the way to Florence for the same cost as the train (he claimed about 95 euros each), even though he claimed he did not really want to drive us there. Again, Meredith and I were skeptical, and asked to just go to the train station. That was good, since the tickets to Florence on the 120 mph train were only 47 euros each, and not 95. Also our driver was conveniently bad at math – six people at 15 euros each is 90 euros, but he thanked us for the three euro tip when we gave him a total of 108 and were waiting on some change. Meredith questioned that, and we got it down closer to 90.

The train to Florence was fine, except the track number was not announced until very close to the scheduled departure time, and so while we made it to the train, we had not been sitting down long when the train moved out. The weather was perfect, and so barreling though the countryside for about ninety minutes was very pretty, when I could stay awake.

Our hotel was about a twenty-minute walk from the train station, so we managed the crowds and cobblestones and cars fairly well, often distracted by the beauty around us. We were staying at a nunnery that rents out rooms, and two of our three rooms were ready. Mer and I waited for our room in the pretty garden, where some flowers were already in full bloom, and there were a couple of orange trees bearing fruit.

Once our room was ready, we napped for about three hours, a tactic we use to make the first jet-lagged day much more bearable. We met up with Regina and Tim, Meredith N., and Jacob. Regina had said she could not sleep, so she had gone out and tried to order a pepperoni roll, and instead got an Italian beer, Peroni. When we left the nunnery to go to supper, as we stepped onto the street, we saw a group of young ladies all wearing fifties-style garments, with jackets that read, in English, “Pink Ladies.” Of course.

We had supper at a restaurant down near the Duomo (the cathedral), where the restaurant served organic pizzas. The food was welcome, and quite good, and the background music was mostly music from America in the fifties and sixties.

After our having eaten, Meredith took us on a foot tour of Florence, starting at the Duomo and the square it sits in, including its nearby baptistery. We walked down a wildly popular shopping street to a large square which was Florence’s equivalent to the Roman Forum. We then backtracked to the shopping street to see a church that had been converted from an old granary in the 1500s that is surrounded by excellent early Renaissance statues of saints and other biblical figures. We wound over to Pizza della Signoria, where the David statue used to be, now replaced with a replica. There is also a porch with a dozen classical and Renaissance statues decorating it, as well as being in one of the finest squares in the city.

We then head over to Florence’s river, the Arno, and the most famous bridge in Florence, the Ponte Vecchio (the Old Bridge). We walked across the bridge to the other side, and then returned back up the river so we could go find Meredith’s favorite gelato (Italian ice cream) place from when she was in school here back in 1993. We found it, had some excellent gelato, and then finished the tour by going by the square that has the Santa Croce church. It was uncrowded, the lights were on, and the evening was cool, but fine. It was a good way for most of us to end the evening, but Jacob and Regina decided to forge on for another hour on their own. That was bold of them, and I was pleased they felt comfortable doing that.