France/Italy-2

My boyfriend Jayme’s best friend Brittany is also an au pair living in Rome and after a brief but warm meeting over Skype we decided we wanted to plan a few adventures together to take advantage of our unique situation. So, as both a way to avoid overstaying my welcome and to avoid the stress that job/home hunting had proven to be, we organized a six day Italian tour just four days after my arrival in Paris.
I took the night train from Paris to Florence, and although it came highly recommended, my experience was actually quite dismal. I began my 12 hour train ride with nothing but my backpack and a train ticket marked with a deceptive plate that had a knife and fork printed on either side of it (meal included right?...wrong) I quickly learned that just means dining car available; that you can buy food, for cash, so my five Euros bought me the most bland salad I’ve ever tasted and that was my dinner, snack, and breakfast. I was also looking forward to the camaraderie that I anticipated would come out of the long trip and the close quarters that four people are meant to share but my ‘bunk’ mates were not so keen on that idea. I learned most of what I knew about them when customs officers came through and we all had to show our passports and let them riffle through our bags. The Chinese man who sat opposite me, we’ll call him Dave, spoke only enough to report the 13,000€ in cash he had hanging around his neck and to tell us how to turn off the light when we were all tucked in. There was also a young Italian woman, Wendy perhaps, and an African man, who we’ll just call Aly, who said where they were from and who were both kind enough to offer me some of their food (I probably looked a little freaked out), but that was the extent of our ‘bonding.’ The experience with customs was actually pretty intense. We were awoken at about 2am, they practically punched our door down, and after they counted all 13,000€ of Dave’s cash collection and completely unpacked my bag (down to opening and sniffing my conditioner, smelled pretty good if I do say so myself) they asked Aly for his passport and when he could only provide an identification card he was taken off the train with all his bags, and we never saw him again. Wendy quietly cried herself to sleep; not sure if it was Aly’s abrupt departure or her homesickness, but the darkness made me weary of crawling down to see if she was ok. I woke up and it was an hour passed the time I was supposed to arrive in Florence, they were calling the name of the town that was listed after my stop on the ragged old piece of paper taped to the window, and Dave looked really worried. We soon learned we were actually three hours delayed so Dave said he’s watch for our stop and I fell back asleep.
I made it to my final train station in Florence with a little help from Dave and was only three hours late for my 7:30-9a meeting time window with Brittany. Luckily we both had agreed on the necessity of a back-up plan for that, and yet another for that plan. So I found her tucked under a purple umbrella on the steps of the Duomo right where we had planned. We were instantly friends, I know it was in large part the relief of actually finding each other and having a travel buddy but it was also a like-mindedness that has blossomed into a great over-seas support system and a lasting friendship.
We had cappuccinos at the ‘Any Time’ Café and spent a little time organizing our thoughts and getting the ‘team’ together, and then caught a bus to find the famous Dany Hostel. We asked for directions with everyone we encountered and found that, after hearing the address we were looking for, people were pointing both up the hill and down the hill. So we made the trek up the hill, didn’t find it there, and headed back down the hill. By the time we found it and someone answered the door, we were drenched from the rain and yelling and jumping up and down from the excitement of it all. We checked in and settled into our three bunk-bed dorm-style room and met our roommates Midori from Japan (who goes by Green) and Andrea from Argentina. We hit it off with them immediately and had so much fun that Green changed her train ticket and ended up staying an extra night.
After we had settled in Brittany and I headed out to spend the rest of the afternoon exploring Florence. We started out with a plan but we ended up just letting ourselves get lost and seeing the city that way. Our first stop was a little side-walk restaurant where we ordered three entrees and a celebratory glass of wine. We both had recently read Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and decided we too would indulge in the Italian way; we stopped for Gelato at least twice a day and by the end of our trip had tried every pasta dish imaginable. After our lunch we let a group of boys from Naples give us their version of the city tour, which ended up being three times around the same block while they tried tirelessly to get us to profess our love for them in Italian. We took pictures in front of the David ‘imposter,’ perused the jewelry stores near the Pontevecchio, went back for another peak inside the Duomo, and roamed as many Piazzas as we could find.
That night we enjoyed a home cooked meal and live entertainment by Frederico the 70 year-old piano man extraordinaire at the Dany Hostel. For his last song he asked for a volunteer to play with him and out of the four of us there wasn’t one who could play, so he picked the timid, nervous little Green. She sat down awkwardly at the piano and Frederico had her stick out her pointer finger as he guided her through a very choppy version of Fur Elise. They finished and everyone applauded, and Frederico went into the kitchen for a break, leaving Green in the spotlight at the piano. Her cheeks rouged a bit, but then she placed her hands and feet in position and began to play the most beautiful version of Fur Elise I’ve ever heard. Frederico came running back into the room and we all sat in shock as she played the entire piece, and then sheepishly backed away from the piano, swearing it was the only song she knew how to play. We stayed up late laughing and joking, disagreeing on our count of the continents, drawing cartoons of each other, and then we exchanged information and all agreed we had to meet up again sometime in the near future.
The next day Brittany and I checked out of the Dany Hostel early to get a good spot in line to see the real David at the Academia Museum. Then we took the train out to Lucca to see the famous wall of Lucca, but because of train times and scheduling conflicts the wall and a coffee shop were all we had time to take in. We took the train back in the opposite direction and went a few stops further where Brittany’s family friends were waiting to take us to their home in Pontessieve, out in the Italian countryside. There we were treated to yet another wonderful home-cooked meal and great conversation. Andree is from the states and married an Italian man so she was able to provide a fun little sneak peak into the Italian culture that we would never have otherwise seen. She explained the no flip-flops in public, no bare feet at home, no cappuccino’s after noon, and pasta first on its own plate traditions and even shared some of the bidet etiquette.
The next morning we took the train back into Florence, grabbed our last Gelato (in Florence) and hopped the train to Rome. Due to the worker’s holiday we were stuck at Roma Termini waiting for a bus for about three hours, and just when we were going to give up a man came out of nowhere and informed us the buses would begin arriving in about twenty minutes (we both swear he was an angel). So we made it back to Brittany’s home in Perioli and recharged before heading out for the night. We walked into town and had dinner and drinks at a funky little bar with a live jazz band, and then managed to find the one store that sold Gelato until 2am.
On my last day in Italy we got up early, grabbed cappuccinos at the café across the street from Brittany’s house and headed off to see as many Roman sites as we could fit in. We made it to the Vatican, stopped for Gelato by the Pantheon, climbed the Spanish Steps, and threw a penny in Trevi Fountain (so both of us knew we’d come back). We also saw the Arco di Constantino, the Coliseum, and the Roman forum. It was a holiday so there were more tourists than usual, which only made the contrast between the modern-day city that Rome is and the vast history that the city is built on, even more apparent. It was bizarre to watch mopeds and mini-cars go racing by the Coliseum; it was almost as if everyone there had somehow managed to get passed the security guards and had taken over this giant museum.
I caught the night train back home, although this time I boarded after everyone had tucked in and turned off their lights, so I crept quietly into my bunk and tried, without luck, to fall asleep until Paris.