Oh the places to go.....

Florence - A room with a view

Thursday we headed from Rome up to Florence. I love Northern Italy and especially Florence. It's such a great city with so much to do and see and loads of great shopping. We got into Florence pretty late in the afternoon and had to find our campground where we were staying. I wasn't too sure about this at the beginning but it's hasn't been too bad. Until now. When we got there I realized that we were to be staying in tents!! I was a little irritated because I don't want to be in Florence camping in a tent. I had a little moment where I needed to just be by myself because I was hugely dissapointed. I'm in Europe and in Florence and I'm staying in a tent!! I admire all the people who like to do that but I'm not one of them. I like having my creature habits like a bed, a floor, a roof over my head, a bathroom that I don't have to hike to and don't have to share with 50 other people.

After we got situated we left for town to go look around. We were all a bit hungry and so we set out to find some dinner. We found this really cute outdoor cafe in the Piazza Ufesi and were enjoying ourselves when it started to rain. We all kind of looked at each other and starting laughing because we felt like it was our Sorrento dinner all over again. And wouldn't you know it Charles was the one exposed again. The rain kept coming and getting harder and the wind started up and was blowing in our direction. We asked the waitresses if we could get an umbrella to put over us becuase there were other umbrellas up but she told us that if we were exposed than we ran the risk of getting wet. So much for sympathy!! Then to add insult to injury our food was a huge dissappointment too. Dave got the pasta and they brought out about 3 scoops on a salad plate. It looked more like an appitizer. Charles and I had ordered a three course meal and our first course was soup which was really good. They brought us some bread to go with our soup but it was pretty tasteless. It was super soft and moist but it really had no taste. Then we had to wait in the rain for our second and third course. Our second course was the main meal and I had ordered the salmon which was pretty good but they served it on a bed of wilted lettuce. Charlese got the roasted turkey and it was like two slices of sandwich turkey with some gravy on it and it was cold!! They said that they serve it cold on purpose. With closer inspection he's was also served on a bed of wilted lettuce. They our third course was a salad which also had wilted lettuce and both Charles and I didn't even bother to each. We just paid our bill and got out of there. So much for a good meal in Florence.

We walked around and went to the Duomo but it was closed so we couldn't go in out of the rain so we walked to a gelateria and got some gelato. Afterwards we decided to head back to the campsite and play uno. We were trying to find the bus that would take us back and we're having any luck and were getting rained on so we were going to take a taxi but of course everybody else was trying to do the same. We decided to head back over the ponto de veccio to see if we could catch a bus there and sure enough we found one. Once back at the campground everybody was at the same covered patio area drinking and smoking and socializing. We decided to try and find what city we were going to go to next and Charles was trying to get a hold of his cousin.

We couldn't play uno because we're in tents and have no light or any access to a candle or flashlight so I opted to go to bed. But I don't know how much sleep I really got. It pretty much rained all night long and it made my bed and sheets damp which really suck to sleep in. YOu feel like you're sweating or something. During the night I had to go to the bathroom really bad but it was still raining super hard and I risked getting really wet if I tried to do it. So I opted to just do my business on the side of my tent and try to stay out the rain as much as possible. Somehow I fell back asleep and woke up again at 6:00 to go to the bathroom again. By then it had stopped raining but was muddy. Fun. By the time I got back to my damp tent I was trying to fall back to sleep. A few minutes later the driver and some other guys of a Cech bus group came over and stated having a conversation like it was mid day or something. During this they kept trying to clear their throats and cough up all their smoker flem and so trying to get back to sleep was pretty much lost at that point. I was so irritated that at one point I even yelled at them to shut up I was so frustrated.

Needless to say I unfortunately didn't enjoy my time here is Florence and couldn't wait to leave. Hopefully next time I'm here it will be under better circumstances.

posted by Camille @ 7:16 AM