Afterwards, we revisited some of the sites we saw on the tour with Daniel on Thursday - the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Piazza Venezia and the Roman Forum, and the Colosseum. We just strolled around and took a few more pictures, and it was very pleasant. We walked through the Forum over to Julius Caesar's tomb where Daniel told us that each day for over 2,000 years fresh flowers are put on the tomb.It signifies how important Julius Caesar was to Rome.
We walked around for a bit after the Colosseum and I tried to find Nero's house, but we didn't find it, and we just took the metro back to the hostel. Then we read and took a nap for a while. We went back out a little after 7PM to get pizza at a small caefeteria style restaurant near the train station, and then we walked to the cinema to see if there were any English language films playing. There was an English film, Calendar Girls, but it didn't start until 9:30 so we just walked around for about an hour and a half.
There is a big celebration going on around Rome tonight called White Night. The trains and buses are free after 10PM and there are concerts and other entertainment going on in various sections of the city. The problem for us is that everything starts so late, and we don't want to go out in the middle of the night to listen to music. The event at the train station doesn't start until midnight, and some thiungs don't start until 2AM.
There are 3 men and 3 women in our dorm room and one of the men asked "Why aren't you going out?" We told him we had an 8AM train and we would rather sleep. One guy came into the room about 10PM and the other 2 didn't even leave until 11PM. Ther woman and one of the guys came in around 1:30 and the other came in about 3:30.
Just before the second guy came in, I noticed that the lights outside our window were off and when he came in the bathroom lights didn't work. Our hostel was near the train station and it was very noisy with lots of traffic out on the street. So between the traffic and the people coming and going, I kept waking up all night.
9/28: We got up around 7AM, and there were still no lights on in the hostel. As we were checking out, we found out the electricity was off over a large portion of Italy, at least up to Milan. We walked over to the train station with all our stuff to find out that no trains were moving anywhere. The station was very crowded, some people were travelers waiting for trains, and some were left over from the concert.
We sat for almost 2 hours on a bench at the track from which our train would have left, and then we moved into the train that was on the track. It was much more comfortable sitting in the train, and I fell asleep for a while. There were people everywhere in the station - standing, sitting, lying on the floor or sitting in trains. Every once in a while they would make an announcement in Italian, which basically said the trains were cancelled until further notice.
The power came back on about noon but no trains moved. About 1:30 we decided we should get a room for the night and I started to walk to check out a place we saw last night, when I noticed there was a train listed for 2:06 going to Pisa and Genoa. It listed a track, so I went back and got Shari and we walked over and got on the train. It started filling up with lots of people and we were very pleased that we would soon be on our way out of Rome. No such luck.
At 2:30 an Italian man in our compartment said he just hard they cancelled the train. So we got off and walked to another hostel (our 3rd in Rome). This one seems pretty good - a 6-bed dorm with breakfast, for 18 euros. Of course, breakfast wasn't much at the M&J Hostel - they gave us a packaged croissant, a packaged muffin and a juice box, but it's better than nothing.
I suggested we check out the times for movies so we put our stuff in the dorm room and walked to the theatre. Calendar Girls was playing at 4:50 so we had about 1.5 hours to kill. We got a drink at McDonald's so we could sit at a table and read our books, and I also called Margie. I was so happy to talk with her.It's been a while, and I miss her.
The movie was terrific and it was a very pleasant way to spend the late afternoon/early evening. We got out of the theatre just before 7PM, sat outside to write notes and read for a while, and then got pizza (again) to take back to eat in the room.
9/29: We had no problem getting the 7:54AM train to Florence. Some people had reserved seats, but we were in a compartment with a couple from Australia and we didn't have to move because the train didn't fill up. We got to Florence about 10:00AM, and we stopped by the Tourist Information for a map and information on musical events before we walked to the hostel. There is a classical concert at a church tomorrow night-a tenor and a pianist will be performing arias from Puccini and Leoncavallo, which we plan to attend.
The hostel, Archi Rossi, was a 15 minute walk from the train station and it is a very nice hostel. Much cleaner and better run than the ones in Rome. We are paying 23.50 euros for a 4-bed dorm room with its own bathroom. There are 4 nice beds (no bunk beds) in the room with lots of floor space for our packs and it is very bright and clean.
We left our bags and went for a walk around the city. One of the most famous sights in Florence is the Duomo, an incredibly beautiful church which has a very elaborate facade. The baptistry next to it is the oldest building in Florence. Dante was baptized there, and the building is famous for its guilded bronze doors, particularly the east doors facing the Duomo, entitled The Gates of Paradise, by Lorenzo Ghiberti.
We went for a walk across the Arno River over the Ponte Vecchio (a famous 14th century bridge which is now just lined with gold and silversmith shops). First we checked out the location of the church where the concert will be held. It is on the other side of the river, and the concert starts at 9:15PM, so we didn't want to be walking around in the dark looking for the church tomorrow night. Then we walked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo for a panorama view of Florence. We had a magnificent view of the city. Florence is really lovely and I took lots of pictures.
We went back to the hostel about 3PM and took a nap, showered, did laundry and figured out how we are going to spend the next few days. We want to see Siena and San Gimignano and Pisa. We decided to go to Siena first (which we can reach by train) and then we will take a bus to San Gimignano. We will come back to Florence tomorrow evening for the concert, and stay at the hostel again. Then on Wednesday, we will head out to Pisa.
We left the hostel about 7:15 to walk back to Piazolla Michelangelo to have a view of the city at night. It was pretty, but the Duomo wasn't lit up very well, so I couldn't get a picture of it. We stopped at a small restaurant on the way back to the hostel for dinner. We had a real sit-down dinner in a nice little restaurant. I had a quarter litre of red wine and wonderful ravioli, stuffed with spinach and ricotta, and covered in an asparagus/radicchio sauce. We got back to the hostel about 10:30, one of the few times we have been out in the evening.
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