| Glenn's Cinque Terre Journals 5-21-02 Tuesday morning and we were off again on a few travel days to get to Cinque Terre and our last stop in Italy before heading on to Spain. Our first stop today was in Rome where I had the task to check on mail that we had been unable to collect 3 weeks ago when we were here last time. This time we were only in Rome long enough to get the mail and continue on to Florence. We started the day off finding the Circumvesuviana (train) into Napoli where we would switch over to the Eurorail to catch a train on to Florence. The switch in Napoli went well and the wait between trains was not long enough to do anything useful in Napoli. We arrived in Rome early in the afternoon. I left Erin with all of the bags in a train station waiting area (I thought to be as safe as any place) and off I went to the post office. The post office was near the Fontana de Trevi so it took me a half hour to get there. No worries as the next train to Florence was not for another 2 hours. I arrived at the post office to find that one piece of mail had arrived (and of course not the most important one). I even asked for help and they were nice enough to locate the only English speaking person (a nice gentleman that had helped me last time I was here) in the post office to assist. Even with his help, the package that I was after was nowhere to be found. The package had been mailed from the states over 5 weeks ago. They did say that after 1 month if no one had claimed the package that they would return it to the sender. (I am sure if it shows up at all back in the US it will be many months coming!!!) Frustrated, I returned to the train station to catch up with Erin (who had been reading all the while) and catch the next train to Florence. We arrived in Florence around 6:30 pm and went straight towards the Archi Rossi hostel that we had enjoyed so much the last time we were here. As we had assumed, the hostel was full, but the guys behind the counter remembered us (and offered us other choices of accomodation) and we ran into our artist friend whom had sketched Erin the last time we were in town. We checked a few other places along the same street (found some full and others more expensive) and ended back at the Hotel Armonia (which we had remembered from our last visit but had passed on) and for 60 Euros per night caught a room there. The gentleman at the desk was very friendly and helpful with where to visit in the city but we told him that we had been in Florence only a month before and had seen everything he had mentioned. We were only passing through this time. After we had dropped our stuff off in the room, we went back to the Archi Rossi for dinner and a visit with our artist friend. He had been very busy since we were there last and had not had a minute to finish the sketch of Erin that he had started. After dinner Erin put in a movie (one of the reasons she loved this place so much, she loves movies!!!) and we stayed until the end around 11:30 pm. |
| Ancient Temple (clip art) that reminds us of Florence |
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