Firenze is what the people of Italy call this city, so we’ll just go with that. Also, there is a centaur from Harry Potter named Firenze…
It was a very long jaunt and kind of a slog, but still, a very beautiful train ride to get here:
We went along the Côte d’Azur for most of the ride, so we saw a lot of the magnificent Mediterranean Sea.
The Smoothie Massacre
We had a system going in order to reach our destination that involved five trains. On the first train, my dad bought a smoothie for me. It was a strawberry smoothie and quite delicious. However, whilst trying to manage to carry all of my things onto the train in one go–I floundered and tragedy struck as the smoothie was sacrificed and it went kersplat on my clothes, floor of the train, and my shoes. For the rest of the trip, you could still see the faint roseate stain on the toe of my shoe, a memento of sorts of the occasion. It didn’t help that my stomach didn’t feel too well for most of the ride, and as comfy as the beds were the night before, I didn’t get much sleep. In this video, if you look closely at my shoe, you’ll see the infamous stain as well as the catalyst of the whole event, the rebellious smoothie itself!
and now without further ado, a nice timelapse shot:
Arrival in Florence
Once the chain of train rides was over, we did indeed arrive in Firenze. I thought maybe I had dreamt we were there at first–it took so long. What a beautiful city. Not only the seat of the Italian Renaissance and capital of Tuscany, but the birthplace of gelato. Immediately we noticed that there were many more tourists here than in France. Despite Italy’s COVID rules being more strict. The first dinner we had was outdoors in this bella piazza. I ordered a spaghetti carbonara and fries. I was hungry and the atmosphere of the restaurant was lively. The only drawback to this enjoyable experience was we didn’t know that in Italy (as well as France and most of Europe), the tip is included with the bill. My dad, being American, thought they tried to pull a fast one on us by adding an extra 20 euros to the total. Seems a bit much, no?