Train to Florence....

The initial plans were to rent a car and drive to florence. However, since we dropped those plans, we made our way to the railway station to book the train to Florence. We had been warned about thefts in Italy and we were atmost careful with our luggage. We bought two tickets on the Eurostar for the train starting at 11:35 and it was 11:15 at that time. We ran to look for the platform, needless to say language was a big problem. We found a guy in a uniform who looked at the tickets and said that it was running an hour late.

Finally we looked at the board with the timings and our train was actually going to Milan and there were two columns, guessed it was real time and delayed time.

We were still not very sure and there was a Eurostar office right where we were standing. I went in and the lady there was SOOOO RUDE. She was like "says on the board that the train is late? So its late." Unbelievable. Be warned!!.
Finally at 12:35 the train did not show up. The 12:35 train showed up and left. Since we were extremely handicapped with the language restrictions, we decided to stick to our train. Finally the train showed up an hour late and in the meantime, we (read Neeraj) found a Pizza place which was like MacDs. They served pizza by the slice with a drink and a fruit bar. I am really sorry to say but it was so bad ...never expected to find bad pizza in Italy however after the bad lunch, finally we were on our way. The train itself was quite nice and the A/C was a welcome. Neeraj had a Dan Brown for company and I had myself. I kept on falling in and our of sleep and finally to keep myself awake, I made my way to the pantry car and back balancing two cups or amazing coffee.

When we reached Florence, (we had the directions to get to the hotel for a change), we purchased the tickets for the bus to go to the hotel and with our small but heavy bags, stood in the line. It was sheer madness, there were people all over, it was hot and finally when we got on the bus, there were about 25 more people on the bus that there were places for them to sit. The streets of Florence are narrow and full of people on foot. Neeraj and I were standing right at the front of the bus and several times, I had to close my eyes when we got too close to a pedestrian or a bike. After about 15 minutes, we did not know where to get down and got very nervous.
I asked a lady behind me and it seemed like she knew the hotel and told the bus driver someting. He nodded and continued driving. At a certain place, the lady started talking to me in Italian and with some hand gestures, we figured that she wanted us to get down. We got down and started following her.

With broken English, we understood that she had her own restaurant, close to our hotel and that our hotel was not too good! :( And then she asked me if I was Spanish..!!!! I have been asked if I am Spanish, Indonesian, Persian and Canadian.....

Finally we reached the hotel and though we were extremely tired, we wanted to go to to Pisa and decided to make our way back to the train station.