Rodey on the Road

Well the past couple days have been spent wandering florence, I didnt get to see the David this time, but I will be headed down there next wednesday or thursday for the following reason:

I took my disposable camera to the shop to be developed, it would be ready in one hour. I returned about an hour and a half later and discovered bars over al the shop windows and the door firmly locked. From what I gathered with my translation abilities, this was a special day, the only day in fact that they were closing early but not to worry, they would re-open at nine the following morning. At 9 the following morning I would be in Switzerland. So I wrote a note in the simplest and most legible English I could manage saying that I had missed the opening and would be returning for the pictures, so to please hold on to them. That settled, Tara and I walked up a lot of steps, up a large hill and eventually made it to a church. She looked around inside for a while, I opted to stay out as I have a weird little thing with churches, and I saw a gift shop just outside. Upon inspeciton of the giftshop, I decided to get a souvenir. My Christ Chianti was a bottle of wine for only 6euros, and it was going to be for later that night. We walked down a few more steps and watched the sunset over florence, and it was one of the most incredible sunsets I had ever seen. All of a sudden an explosion of pink and orange came over the town, reflecting off the river and the tile roofs of the houses, with the mountains in the backdrop.
From there we returned to the hotel, I got my things, we had dinner of dipping day old bread into mayonaise and I caught my train. There was a school group of kids on the train and a couple americans I met. The americans and I started drinking my wine so that my pack would be lighter and the cramped sleeping quarters would seem more spacious, and we met a girl from brazil who was in the school group. She shared some of her wine and offered to let us in to smoking the joint they had a few cabins down. I declined, the other two said sure and I was put in charge of buying the next round with the americans guys money. I did jsut that, went to the bathroom and when I came out the whole car smelt like weed. I also learned the word gonja translates across all languages. We stayed up drinking and talking until about 3 in the morning, and went to bed. This morning I arrived in Bern, caught a train to Neuchatel and hopefully I will be meeting Lydia at some point today, otherwise I fear it will be Park Time 2: Harder and Colder. Look for the update, hopefully its not a sequel.

Alrighty children, here is the story. The hockey game went beautifully, I cheered for the home team and of course they were the better theam and they won. Went to the bar for a couple beers and then an early night as Tara and I had an early morning train to catch. We caught the train despite my desire to stay and watch the guy outside the station wearing the bucket on his head and we made it to Geneva, Switzerland with no problems. We had to switch trains there to get to Milan, and again no problems whatsoever, we remained in our seats, the trains were on time, it was wonderful. In Milan we had half an hour to kill for our train to La Spezia, and given all we had to eat that day was a baguette and nutella, we splurged for dinner and got a sandwich for a couple bucks. We caught our train to La Spezia and it arrived on time, there were hardly anyone on it so there was even enough room to lie down, a new experience for me on italian trains. Everything was going beautifully, we were on time, way under budget and in the morning we would be in Cinque Terra. The hotel we were going to was full, but he told us about the hotel on the next street, they were full as well. We walked around a bit, not wanting to bust the bank on a three star or anything, so we sat down on a park bench and decided that was the spot for the night.
We did not spend the night on the park bench, it was too cold. We spent the night on the dirt/gravel below the bench using the bench to block the wind. All in all I got about 20 minutes of sleep because I felt like I should be on duty and there were dogs and people about at all hours, so I watched the stop lights for hours on end, and by the morning I had the timing down for the green, yellow and red. We got up in the morning, discovered all the wonderful bites left by whatever lives on the ground in parks, and caught the first train to Cinque Terra. Things went even better from there than the day before, especially in comparison with the previous night. We found a hotel, it was an actual hotel for about the same price as a hostel and it had a full shower in the room, which was a requirement as we were both a little dirty from our day of trains and our night of park. We spent two nights in cinque terra, i showered about four times a day and the scenery was just unbelievable. The food was incredible, we met some great people and it was just an amazing two days of relaxing and budgetary success. Today i find myself in florence with plans to head up to bern, switzerland tommorrow to meet the wonderful miss lydia for the weekend, then coming back down to Rome next friday…maybe. So that is whats been happening, its laundry day tommorrow and im excited about that, and if all goes according to plan I will see the david as well. Hope everyone is doing good at home, wherever your home may be, and keep an eye out for the next update, Im sure it will be filled with wonderfulness as apparently I will be going out to a karaoke bar on friday night. Until then…

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