Travel day to Florence

 Up and packed, got some breakfast, brought the luggage down the spiral staircase and 4 other flights of stairs, I haven’t bitched yet about our hotel location have I?  The hotel was okay, freezing AC, decent breakfast, great staff who were awesome to us and all the students.  But, we are not close

  to any bus stop really a good 6 blocks from Termini train station and John and Rachel and I were put in a room on the very top floor with a balcony, but this means 4 flights of stairs ending in a tight spiral staircase.  For some reason, even after going up over 400 stairs a couple of times, these few flights have the ability

 to make me have to stop and hyperventilate practically before going the rest of the way up.  We have become very adept at making sure that we have absolutely everything before leaving the room because no one wants to go back up.  We took special care in getting a taxi service to take us to the train station that we are going out of across town (thanks international office) that would take the credit card and they did take credit cards, but only the ones with chips.  So, Rachel had to pay and will have to get reimbursed by FSU later.  Got to the train station and

the train that we were given on the papers didn’t seem to exist on the arrivals and departures signs, so John and Rachel had to go to the office to get things worked out.  John returns and tells us that our train is tomorrow, but the good news is… and can’t get the rest out because he and Rachel are laughing at our horrified expressions.

 Needless to say, we were on a train that morning for Florence and we were on a train that went 260km per hour.  I had to unstop my ears more often than I do on a plane.  We flew through the Italian countryside to the point that it was a blur, but arrived in Florence early enough to have only two rooms available at the new hotel.  But we dropped off the bags and went out to see David.