The Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge") in Florence
Day 8: Thursday, April 12, 2007
Arrival in Florence
The four of us said our goodbyes at about 8:45 in the morning as we headed off to catch our trains. It wasn't too sad — we were scheduled to meet up again that evening in Florence. We (just Courtney and Nick now) were going to Bologna to see Eric's place and hang out with him in his temporary town of residence. We arrived in Bologna about 2 hours later and realized that our binder containing Eric's vital info had gone missing. We no longer had his phone number or address. We made a quick decision to go ahead and make our way to Florence, since we were scheduled to meet up with Eric later on in the trip anyway. Bologna will have to wait until our next visit to Italy.
Many travelers don't care for Florence. It's a big town crowded with traffic, visitors and vagrants. We got the same impression almost as soon as we stepped off the train. Shortly after arriving, we found a place to stay for the night — a cheap 1-star hotel called Pensione Ferretti. This place wasn't horrible, but it was every bit 1-star and nothing more.
We made our way down to the San Lorenzo area, a densely packed shopping district full of restaurants, bars, street vendors and tourists. After walking around a bit we stopped at a restaurant called Nuti. Nick ordered a huge würtsel calzone (a rolled pizza with hot dog wieners inside) and Courtney ordered some ravioli in cream sauce.
After lunch we made a short trek over to the Ponte Vecchio, which means "old bridge." It stretches across the river and is lined with jewelry shops. Though the bridge was beautiful, there was nothing in the shops that we could afford so we moved on fairly quickly. We walked around the center of Florence a bit more then decided to take a load off along the steps of a building that we came upon. Our location turned out to be a great place for people watching. We sat on the corner of a busy intersection where we watched people, bicycles, mopeds and tiny cars maneuver themselves along the narrow streets. It was madness — we sat for about an hour and were surprised that we never saw a pedestrian get hit by a car.
Tommy, Shea and Caitlin were scheduled to arrive by train at 21:45 so we went and met them. We showed them the way to our hotel and they checked in. Our group had some major planning to do for the days ahead so we spent the rest of the evening utilizing the free Internet at our hotel.