Hello, Old Friend

Wednesday I had the entire day to myself to do whatever I wanted. It was a decently warm day but it was pretty cloudy too, ahwell, I wasn’t really expecting there to be much sun at this time of year. Firenze is a different place when you’re on your own, I definitely kind of liked it better being there on my own and not being attached to a schedule or other people. I began my walk, over to the Duomo, across the piazza, and down the winding streets on the other side. I first came across one of the main piazzas where the merry-go-round was and had flashbacks of DHS guys running over and pretending to ride it, as well as, the group of us trying to use the old school public telephones to try and call our parents to tell them we had arrived in there safe and sound. I stopped in there to take a few photos, and then continued on my way. Eventually I arrived at the Piazza della Signoria where the tall clock tower is along with the copies of famous statues like David and other famous ones depicting stories of Roman gods/heroes, another very familiar place full of memories, although some memories not so pleasant…on one of my trips there we had gotten lost and got to the group meeting spot like 15 minutes late and chewed out by one of our teachers…oops. From there I followed down the side street with all the statues of famous philosophers and writers like Dante and Petraca who I had studied in some of my Italian history classes during 2^nd year uni. After taking so many Italian and art history classes being back in Florence had even more beauty and significance to me, it was beautiful.

Beyond that little side road of all the philosophers is the river, this area of the river is probably one of my favourite places in the world. I reached the river and turned to the right to see my old friend, the Ponte Vecchio (in English ‘Old Bridge’) the famous Firenze bridge; colourful, lined with little jewelry shops, and crowded as always. But more important to me was the bridge beyond that. Walking down the pathway along the river towards the bridges, I felt like I was coming back to…maybe not home, but some place very familiar and comforting. That place was so full of good memories from both my previous trips there and I was just filled with this complete feeling of happiness. I walked down that old familiar cobblestone pathway along the river till I came to my bridge. I guess I should actually call it Our bridge, it was me and my 3 best friends from high school’s favourite place in Firenze. We shared some great moments there during my first trip to Firenze (which was also my first trip to Europe), it was almost sad returning there without them. I sat there on the bridge for a little while then continued on my way across it to explore more of other side of the river. I know we had gone onto that side of the river during our last tour but only to see the one big museum thing at Piazza Pitti and not much else.

After wandering down some of the main streets on the far side of the river, some familiar, some new, I stopped for some lunch at a little trattoria. There was only an Asian family and a couple people at the bar in there so it was pretty quiet. I ordered some pasta, spaghetti Bolognese, which was pretty good and then, continued on my wander. Of course I came across Piazza Pitti, it’s hard to miss, it’s a pretty big piazza that olds one of the big art museums in Firenze, we did a tour of it last time and it lasted like a hundred hours so I figured I probably didn’t want to do that again, it was one of those museums that you could only exit after you had gone through the whole museum which was very long and multiple stories. It was a pretty cool building from the outside so I took a moment to look over it again but then continued on my walk, I was walking down a little side street off the piazza and funny enough I ran into one of the American girls from the night before. She was off to class but said we should hang out later if I had the time, I said sure, she had given me her fb info the night before and whatnot. Small city though eh, you’d think the chances of me seeing one of those 3 American girls again would be pretty slim, but there you have it.

I continued on my walk, aimlessly wandering around, going down random side streets here and there and I some how ended up at the one of the main university campuses. I had passed a couple of the other smaller campuses during my wander but they had been smaller and were blended pretty well into the city, this however was a big park area that led to a couple of massive campus buildings, one of being the main arts faculty building, the façade was under construction, of course. There really isn’t much past the university on that side of Firenze so I turned myself around and started wandering back towards the centre of the city, I stopped for some delicious pizza on the way. They really do make pizza the best in Italy, I don’t know why north America hasn’t figured it out yet. The real secret is the dough, most places use focaccia bread as the base of the pizza –best bread in the entire world– and the toppings are always so fresh, plus Italian cheese is amazing.

I wandered back to the river and this time walked across Ponte Vecchio and down the street beyond it back towards the city centre. I walked only 50ft down the street before I came across another very familiar site, the Queen Victoria restaurant. It had been one of the spots me and my besties had stopped at quite a few times on our trip there. The paninis there had been really good, but even better than those was the gelato, so of course I stopped there to get some gelato. It was delicious, I had eaten that much gelato in Rome so I was definitely going to be eating as much of it Firenze as possible, that is where gelato is originally from after all.

I wandered further into the city, passing the old market place where I had bought a very European scarf on my first trip there, I stopped for a few minutes to wander through it again but this time I just looked at the pretty scarves, jackets, purses, and funny little souvenir items. This trip isn’t a touristy trip, it’s more of a “me” trip and so I’m spending as little money as possible on trivial things like shopping/souvenirs. Material things mean less to me these days, I’m learning to remove my attachment to material things and live for the experiences, and food; good food is definitely an okay thing to spend my money on in Europe. Aha. I eventually found myself back at the Duomo, I considered going up the Duomo tower where you can see an amazing view of the city but it was still pretty cloudy and I had already been walking for hours so going up a few hundred stairs didn’t seem that appealing. Instead I headed over to the train station to buy my ticket to Bologna for the following day. Yeah, my trip was planned pretty last minute but in Italy you can do that, especially at this time of year since it’s definitely not peak tourist season.

 After that I just headed back to the hostel to rest my feet, I also still needed to book a hostel and whatnot for Bologna and figure out where I was going after Bologna, I was thinking about doing a little trip to Verona before heading to Milan to catch my train to Germany, which I also hadn’t booked tickets for at that point. You may be thinking I’m ridiculous for leaving all these things so last minute, well I wouldn’t have left the Bologna hostel so late except for the fact that I hadn’t been planning on staying in a hostel, I had made an account on CouchSurfing (CS) before leaving on my big trip and I had found someone who said they would most likely be able to host me in Bologna, unfortunately the night I arrived in Firenze they had sent me a msg saying they actually wouldn’t be able to host me so, I sent out an emergency CS msg but I hadn’t gotten any appealing offers by the time I had gotten back to the hostel on my second day in Firenze and decided it was just safer to book a hostel, unfortunately since it was so last minute there was really one 1 or 2 options for hostels, the cheapest one being some place called the tourist centre of Bologna or something like that, it didn’t really have much of a description but it was the cheapest so I booked it but only for 1 night because it was still kinda expensive.

I just chilled around the hostel after that, it was starting to rain again and it was getting colder since the sun had gone down, eventually the Aussies and everyone else started showing up again at the hostel, quite a few people had checked out that morning so we had some new people in the hostel, didn’t really meet any of them though besides a new Asian guy who was quite friendly and spoke pretty good English, all the other Asians seemed to kind of keep to themselves, not sure if they spoke much English or not. There were also 2 new Bangladesh guys who showed up later in the afternoon but soon disappeared and only reappeared later that night high as hell as kites and then disappeared into the living room area.

For some reason it was a quiet night in the hostel, no one really seemed to be around or doing anything, so it was just Nat, Mike, and I chilling around in the kitchen. We talked for along time, made dinner, drank some wine, and jammed to more random Aussie and North American music, at some point I remembered that I had a deck of cards with me so I pulled those out and we played cards for a long time. Eventually we all got kind of bored of cards, plus we were all starting to get pretty tipsy so concentrating was becoming more difficult, so we wandered out onto one of the balconies outside of the room Nat was staying in. It had turned into a clear night and you could actually see some stars which was so nice. While we were standing out there we could hear voices coming from the floor above, which was another hostel, and of course the voices were Aussie, you seriously run into them Everywhere in Europe. We stayed out there for a little while, Mike partially wanted to go out there so he could smoke although we weren’t really supposed to use the balcony for that. Ahwell. After that we all just crashed which was probably a good thing since I had to check out at 10am the next morning.

Nat and I both got up early Thursday morning, Nat because she wanted to get a bunch of sight-seeing done that day and me because I had to check out. We said bye to Mike and then to each other, she actually left a bit before I did. I got all my stuff packed up, handed in my key, and then headed out.   

Traveling On

Monday I took a little day trip by myself up to this little town about 45minutes outside of Rome called Tivoli. The train ride up there was beautiful even though it was a pretty cloudy day. I got there and had absolutely no idea what I was doing or where I was going since I had no map and all I knew about the city was that it was a pretty little down up on the hillside and the main attractions were big villas with gardens. I got off the train and followed people out of the station hoping they were heading towards the city, the station was kinda in the middle of in a weird area and I had no idea where to go, luckily the people I was following were headed for town, I had to cross a bridge thing to get to where the main part of town was, thank god for the other people or I may have never found that.

Tivoli was a cute little town on the hillside, I followed the signs towards the main villa, Villa D’Este, on my way there I came to a look out point that had a spectacular view of the city and countryside in the surrounding area. I walked around there for a while and then continued to follow the signs to the villa. Unfortunately when I got there it was closed. Apparently Monday is the one day of the week when it’s closed, damn. Why Monday? Why not Sunday? Whatever. So then I turned around and wandered back towards the city centre, there was a bunch of other signs around there for other attractions so I just started following them. I walked around the city of a long time, down little winding streets, up and down hills, on pathways down by the river, etc. Saw lots of interesting things, stopped eventually for some food and whatnot. There was another big villa/nature area I wanted to see but apparently it was closed too..until March. Finally around 4pm I headed back to the train station, when I got there I went to go buy a return ticket but the machine only accept cards and I didn’t have my visa with me. I was going to go to the ticket office but no one was there, it was tiny station and nothing there was open or working. So I decided to just give up and get on the train.

No one had checked our tickets on the way up there so I figured I’d probably be fine…and as always, because I didn’t have a ticket there was a guy on the bus checking tickets. Dammit. And I could have just told me him I hadn’t bought one but of course I didn’t do that. He came by and I pulled out my ticket from Rome to Tivoli he looked at me and said it was the wrong ticket so I pretended to search my bag looking for my ‘other ticket’ for a bit until I told him I couldn’t find it, unfortunately he was one of those white-haired, stern looking white dudes and didn’t have any sympathy at all, eventually I gave up fake-looking for my ticket, told him I had bought one but must have lost it… still nothing. So he sat down in the seat across from me, gave me that ‘it’s not my problem look’ and wrote me up a ticket. At that point I was thinking ‘ohshit’ there goes a my dinner money for the next two days, and then by some miracle he said “the charge is 7.50” and I repeated “7.50 euros?” He looked at me like I was stupid and just replied ‘si,’ and handed me the ticket. I was actually smiling/laughing on the inside. A penalty of 7.50 euros was definitely not something I was going to complain about, I paid it up and he left. Well that could have been a disaster but actually didn’t turn out too bad. I wish penalties in Canada were like that. 

Anyways, I got back to the hostel and was just chilling in the common room waiting for the boys to show up, they had gone to the Vatican together for the day. There was a couple other people in the common room with me but it was pretty silent in there until the boys showed up, they came in and we were just chilling around when a small Asian looking girl –Jess– sitting in the corner started talking to us. She was another Aussie, surprise surprise, seriously they are everywhere! But she had just finished studying for a semester in Copenhagen and was now traveling for a few months around Europe and North America, she actually studied for a couple semesters at Queen’s University in Ontario too which was crazy! She was very bubbly and a little overly happy to meet some other Aussies and Kiwis, apparently it’s been awhile since she’s heard their accents. She was a little crazy aha but in the best of ways, she was constantly recording things the Aussies and Kiwis were saying just because their accents thoroughly entertained her. Yeah, was kinda odd. We all hung out in the common room until 8ish when the free pasta thing was going on at the bar downstairs and headed down for some dinner. Jess and I had some red wine with dinner while all the boys had beer, the wine wasn’t great but seemed to get jess pretty buzzing aha. Lightweighttt. Then we headed to the super market to get some drinks and munchies for the night and headed back to the common room, man we spent a lot of timing hanging out in there. We hung around drinking in there for a while until Jess said she wanted to go for a walk and see the city at night, we had nothing else better to do so off we went, 2 bottles of wine and 3 beers in hand/pockets aha. Luckily Europe has no rules about drinking in public.

We wandered around and eventually ended up at the Trevi Fountain, it’s definitely one of my favourite places in Rome to go to at night. We sat there for a long time, sometimes talking, sometimes all off on our own contemplating life, drinking wine/beer aha. PerrySound was acting kinda weird all night, not too sure what was up with him, maybe he was tired or a bit too drunk, I don’t know but he was acting strange, at the fountain he was staring off into the distance for awhile with his music in his ears, then he was hitting on any girl he saw within like 30ft, and then when we were walking home he was pulling shit off trees and still hitting on all the females he saw. Very odd, we got back by the hostel and decided to stop at our pizza place again before crashing at the hostel. Delicious pizza as always. We got back to the hostel, made plans with the Kiwis and Jess to hanging out in the following morning/early afternoon since I was leaving later that afternoon for Florence. As soon as we got back to the room PerrySound just passed out on his bed, still in his clothes and within 5 minutes was snoring ridiculously loud. I felt bad for the girl sleeping above him, his snoring woke her up and both her and I were trying to wake him up by calling his name and nudging him. Ohman. Eventually we all got to sleep.

Tuesday morning I had to check out by 10am but that just meant I had to give in my key and get my stuff out of the room, I put my stuff into the baggage storage at the hostel and went out for some breakfast. Decided to go to the breakfast buffet at the restaurant downstairs because I was feeling pretty lazy and all you can eat breakfast plus a coffee for 3 euros is a pretty sweet deal. Then I just went back to the hostel to use the common room’s internet while I waited for the Kiwis and Jess to show up. Eventually we all met up, only one of the Kiwi bros came with but that was alright. We went for a walk around the city, we actually saw a fair bit of the city since we had about 4 hours before I needed to be back at the hostel to get my stuff. It was a great walk, got to spend some good quality time with the Kiwi and Jess before having to say goodbye. At last though, it was time to say goodbye, I got all my stuff and headed for the train station, luckily my train was leaving from the train station just down the street from our hostel instead of the other one, which was about 25mins away. No problems on this train thank god aha. 

A couple hours later I arrived in Florence aka Firenze, it was getting dark and was lightly raining, not so fun. I didn’t really know where I was so I just asked some random person where the Duomo was and headed in that direction. Luckily my hostel was only about a 3min walk from the Duomo so it was pretty easy to find. I walked into the piazza where the Duomo stood and was amazed once again by it’s beautiful exterior. At the same time, it was almost like seeing an old friend again, such a familiar sight full of happy memories. It was kinda strange though, the first time I had been Florence I had been with my best friends from high school, the second I had been with a group of high school people I was kinda friends with, but this time I was returning solo.

The hostel was on the 2^nd floor, well the 2^nd European floor, which is actually the 3^rd floor. When I got there a very cheery guy let me in, he was speaking Italian but he didn’t look that Italian, although by now I have realized it’s much harder figuring out who’s Italian than I originally thought. He had thinning auburn coloured hair, a mustache and a very big grin, he name was Yuri –I’m still not sure what kind of name that is– he got me all sorted, I put my stuff down in room and then ran into Mike the Aussie on my way towards the kitchen. A few minutes later Nat the Aussie girl showed up too aha was like a little Rome reunion. Small world eh.

The hostel was pretty small, probably could only hold about 15-20 people at max and all the rooms had doors but they all connected and during the day they were all open so it was pretty much like living in one big flat all together aha. That could be a little sketchy for the whole privacy/safety perspective of your stuff but honestly we got to know all the people in the hostel pretty quickly and none of us were too worried about it. When I was out during the day I did have a lock on the main part of my backpack and that was probably more than I needed. Safety first of course but really, it was a super chill place.

We hung around in the hostel for a while just talking and getting to know the other people there, then headed over to the super market to get some food and whatnot. One of the other guys –Chris– at the hostel, who was also Aussie, told us that the super markets in Florence were like a maze challenged us to find tomato sauce and cat food when we went. Aha new super market game? I think so. We got there and it looked like a pretty small market, then we realized what the Aussie guy meant, it really was like a maze with a series of small connecting rooms and it didn’t seem to be organized in any particular order either. We wandered around there for a while and eventually found everything we needed, Nat bought some box wine, I still don’t understand why. We headed back to the hostel kitchen and began making dinner and cracking open the drinks.

At first it was only the 2 Aussies and I in the kitchen but not long after we started drinking in there, we were joined by a young Aussie couple, Chris the other Aussie, and a Romanian guy. We all sat around there talking and drinking eventually all started getting pretty tipsy and decided it was about time to go out. The Aussie couple decided to stay back at the hostel so it was just the three Aussies, the Romanian and I going out to wander the streets. We didn’t really know where we were going when we left the hostel but Chris the Aussie had heard about a bar near by so we were heading in that general direction. We eventually found the bar on a little side street not too far from the Duomo, the minute we walked in we knew it was a tourist bar mostly full of Americans and other Europeans but whatever, the drinks were pretty cheap and it seemed like a pretty buzzing place, so we got our drinks and then headed upstairs to find somewhere to sit since the downstairs was pretty crowded.

Upstairs there were a couple tables by the top of the stairs and then there was a skinny room with a door at each end, one by the staircase and one by the balcony for smokers and whatnot. We went in sat in there and had the room all to ourselves which was pretty sweet. Two or three cocktails later we were all pretty drunk and jamming to random Aussie music, I went downstairs to find the washroom and ended up talking to a group of American girls who had just arrived a few days before and were studying in Florence for the semester. They came upstairs to chill with us and we stayed up there talking and jamming until they kicked us downstairs so they could close up the top floor of the bar.

We went and found a table downstairs, by then it was around 1:30am so the bar was pretty empty, it was a Tuesday night after all. Chris the Aussie headed back to the hostel because he was leaving early in the morning but the rest of us and the American girls hung around awhile longer, eventually around 2am the bar guys wanted to close up so we left, we were considering going to another bar or something but it was Tuesday and it was freezing/windy outside so we just headed back to the hostel. Back at the hostel there may have been some silly drunk shenanigans.