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Up and At'em
We actually got up pretty early considering when we turned in the night before. We took a subway down to the central station and bid fairwell to Sandra. She is going to see a few more things around Rome before heading back to Munich. Josh and I had just missed the slow train to Florence, so we decided to buy a ticket for the Eurostar. The ticket came out of the machine at 10:34am and we were on our way at 10:35. Great timing. The whole trip would only take an hour and a half for about 320km. It was a little more than the regular ticket, but still only about US26 for second class one-way.
Hostel Search
The worst thing about jumping from town to town is that it takes time to get oriented in the new place. Since it was about noon, many of
the places in the infamous Let's Go were already full. One hostel referred us to a hotel with a decent double room. We left our bags there (man, mine is heavy) and headed for some lunch.
Florence
We had heard lots of good things about this city. We are leaving the big walking tour till tomorrow, so today we just took in the
atmosphere. It seems a little cooler and cleaner here. Nice shady quiet town which is much more pedestrian friendly. After some more world famous ice cream at Vivoli's (the Briton in front of us swore it was the best) I settled down at a plaza on a bench. Drew a little picture of a street artist who was painting pictures. Nice afternoon.
Long Walk
I had the yearning to watch a movie again. There are lots of places with special showings in the summer, some outdoors. We took a long
walk out towards the suburbs to a huge sports complex. Palasport. The showing tonight was Jackie Brown (USA) and Hana Bi (Japan) for about US6. Unfortunately, both films were being shown in Italian without any subtitles, so we decided to give it up. We walked back toward town stopping at a supermarket for some dinner provisions.
Space Electronic Disco
I have not had a lot of luck with discos in Europe, but Josh was interested in checking out the dancing scene. We saw a sign for one place located in another sports center out west of city center. Not wanting to walk again, we opted for a place right near our hotel. Paid a whopping US13 or so to get in, no drink included. It was a big place with all the fancy lasers, big-screen tvs and whatnot. However, the crowd was all tourists (to be expected?), mostly Americans it
seemed. Thanks to the lax drinking laws, it looked like the average age was about 16. The DJ, presumably American or British, played a rather varied mix from rap-soul type stuff, to some Latin and Brazilian, to classic wedding reception songs like YMCA, Shout, and lots of Grease hits. If it weren't for the laser show, I would have felt really ripped off. Twas a good day, though, all in all.
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