We had gotten used to sleeping in a bit for the last few days, so the alarm going off at 6:45 AM this morning was a little harsh, but we needed to get ready and finish packing for our train trip to Florence today.
I got up first, and showered, and packed a little more in my suitcase. Once I was finished with my toiletry bag, the last item to fit into my suitcase, my packing was done. Stephanie got up after I was done showering, and she got her shower. Once we were dressed, we had a little breakfast in the room consisting of mixed berry yogurt, a banana each, and some water.
We actually got everything packed a little early, so we just sat in our open window taking in the last of our view of the Riomaggiore Harbor. It was sunny this morning, but the seas were much rougher than even yesterday. The swells were occasionally breaking over the seawall protecting the harbor.
At about 8:30 AM we left the room and started the journey to the train station. There were quite a few steps to get out of the hotel, and then more steps to get to the small piazza near the hotel. Once we were in the piazza, it was literally all downhill to the train station and no more steps.
We were scheduled to take a 9:03 AM train from Riomaggiore to La Spezia, and then make a connection there for a train to Pisa Centrale, and then from there, make our final connection to Florence. Knowing how the trains run late in Italy, we decided to go ahead with an earlier train to La Spezia so we would have more time to change platforms there before the next train, avoiding the possibility of our scheduled train from here being late. We only had about 12 minutes to make the connection in La Spezia on our original train schedule from Riomaggiore, and taking this earlier train gave us an additional 15 minutes. The train was almost on time, and it was not crowded at all. We just stood in the doorway of the coach, it was only a 7 minute ride from Riomaggiore to La Spezia.
We did have to make a platform change in La Spezia, so we had to carry our suitcases down a long flight of stairs to the underground platform connection passageway. We were able to take an elevator up to the next platform, the elevator had arrived just as we walked next to it, and it was empty. That saved a little stress on our already aching legs.
The next connection was an InterCity train that required seat reservations, and we had spent a few of dollars more to go first class for the 75 minute ride. We knew we were in Coach No. 1, so we headed to where the front of the train would typically be when it arrived at the platform. Surprisingly, the train was running a few minutes late, and right before it arrived there was an announcement on the PA system, first in Italian, and then luckily, in English, that the first class cars would be at the end of the train, not the front, as is typical. We only had a few minutes to work our way through the crowded platform to get to the other end. Luckily, there were quite a few other folks needing to do the same thing, so we had a line piercing through the crowd in that direction.
While we were still walking, the train arrived at the station. We did not quite make it all the way to the last coach when the doors on our train were already opening. We hustled a little, and finally made it to the nearest door, and rushed to get us and our bags on the train before the doors closed. The trains are only in the station for about 2 minutes.
We were not sure which coach we were on, the Italian trains are really bad at labeling the coaches, and/or we had been in so much of a hurry to get to the rear of the train when it arrived at the station, we were not paying attention to the coach numbers. We thought we were on the correct coach, but when we got to what we thought were our seat numbers, they were occupied by a couple that had boarded right before us. I was thinking that maybe we were not yet to coach 1, so we headed rearward to go to the end coach. On the way back, and a man informed us we were in the last car before the rear engine, and we could not go any farther.
Apparently, the couple was in our seats, so we headed back and asked them their seat numbers. They did not know which seats or coach they were in, or even supposed to be in, just that they were in first class. They moved, but left their luggage in the overhead rack, and went off to try and find out where they should be. I was going to look at their tickets to try to help them out, but they left before I could ask to see them. A little while later they came back to get their luggage. Apparently, they were supposed to be seated in Coach Number 2, not here in Coach Number 1, so that was resolved, and there was no conflict with our seats.
This was a higher speed train so it only made four stops before arriving at Pisa Centrale, about 9 minutes late. They made an announcement about our connecting train, and thankfully, it was also running a little late, but it was also arriving three platforms over, so we headed down another long stairway, luggage in tow, and then had to also climb up another set of stairs to the platform we needed. Unfortunately, there was no elevator at this station. These are the activities that make us think about packing a lot lighter next time, it was an effort to get the luggage up the stairs. Of course, we always say that and never make it happen!
There was a large crowd on the platform for this train, and most of them had luggage. This was a regional train, so there are no seat assignments, just first come, first served. The train arrived, and kept going down the platform, and from where we had been standing, we almost missed the last coach. We could tell that there were a lot of people at the other end of the platform, but the train was not as long as we, and a lot of other people had thought. As the train was slowing down to stop, we had to hustle to get farther up the platform. We made it into the last coach, and found that there were no luggage racks at all, just small, well really tiny, overhead racks. Everyone, including us, had to use seats for their luggage, we ended up getting a front/rear facing set of four seats, and had our luggage in two of them. Luckily, the train had double deck coaches, so everyone was able to get seats despite the extra baggage taking up so many seats.
It was an uneventful one hour ride into Florence, to the main train station there, Santa Maria Novella. This was the terminating point for the train. This station only has trains come into it and then go back out in the opposite direction, no trains just pass through. All of the platforms are accessible from the main station at the front of the trains. Since we were in the last coach, we had quite a long walk into the station.
We exited the station and used Google Maps on the phone to help us to get to the hotel, which is really close to the Duomo, or main Cathedral. It was pretty easy to navigate there, the Duomo is visible from pretty far away since it is so large. We did make one slight deviation in getting to the hotel, but it was just one street over, and not really any farther, just not the preferred route.
We found the building for our hotel, the Relais Duomo Adelaide, which is really an apartment. It is located in a large building with other permanent residences, and the glass front door was locked. Someone came out and we went inside, and there was a person inside who asked us what we needed, or at least we thought that was the question, it was all in Italian. We showed him the name of our apartment rental on a piece of paper, and he indicated, in mostly sign language, with Italian commentary, to just wait here. We sent a WhatsApp text to our hotel contact letting them know we had arrived, and a few minutes later a gentleman showed up and introduced himself as Franco. We rode up the elevator with him to the fourth floor, and to our room.
The room was nice, we have a front window, a large room with the bed, and a mini kitchen. The bathroom is nice size, but had really bright orange tile. That will certainly wake us up in the morning when we are getting ready. Franco took me back downstairs to show me the locks and keys to get into the building at night, there is a large wooden double door that apparently gets locked sometime after dark, and then a glass door behind that which is always locked.
We headed back upstairs and we were finished with the check in, and Franco left. We took some photos of the room and then unpacked some of our gear. We are only here for two nights, so we hopefully will not mess up the suitcases too much in that short amount of time.
We freshened up, and I changed into some shorts. It was hot and sunny here today, and since we were not planning to go into any churches, shorts were OK. It was about 1:15 PM, and we needed some lunch. We headed up our street, Via Ricasoli, in the direction of the Accademia, about two blocks away, and on our same street. We had 3:00 PM reservations to go there and see the Statue of David. On the way there, we found a small sandwich shop and ordered two Panini sandwiches, one with ham and cheese, one with prosciutto and cheese. They were heated, and quite tasty, especially the cheese.
With food in our stomachs, we headed up to the Accademia to figure out how to trade in our vouchers for tickets. A staff person helped us, and even though we still had about 90 minutes before our scheduled admission time, he said we could go ahead and trade in the voucher and get our tickets. Normally, they suggest 15 minutes before the scheduled time for this transfer, but they let us go ahead and get our tickets for the 3:00 PM admission early.
While we waited for 3:00 PM, we visited a small Carrefore Grocery nearby and checked on pricing for some items we will pick up after our Accademia visit. We still had quite some time before our scheduled reservation so we headed back in the direction of the room toward the Duomo. On the way, we saw a Bancomat, an ATM, at an actual bank building, and we needed to get some more cash. Since we were almost right next to the room, we took the extra money up to the room for safe keeping, pickpockets are really bad in Florence, so no reason to take any risk carrying the extra cash.
After dropping off the money at the room, we walked over the Duomo to take some photos from the outside. The lines to get in were ridiculously long, and we will probably not bother going into the Duomo since we saw it the last time we were here in 2010. Same for the climb to the Dome, it is all by timed reservation now, and we also did that last time we were here. Back then, we just walked up, paid the entrance fee for the climb up to the Dome, and went up. Times really have changed, and Italy seems to be so much more crowded than even nine years ago. We only had a few hours on a train layover last time we visited Florence, and had seen both the Duomo, and climbed the Dome without any waiting or reservations. That had been the reason we had not visited the Academia or the Uffizi last time, they have always been by timed reservation, and we had too short of a layover that trip to visit either of them.
It was approaching our time for the entry to the Academia, so we walked back to the entrance. It was about 2:45 PM when we arrived, so we went ahead and got into the shorter reservation line. Apparently, we were close enough to our scheduled time, they let us in even though we were a little early. We first visited a musical instrument museum, music was very popular here during the Medici Reign that ended in the early 1700’s.
There were also quite a few paintings from churches on display inside the gallery, but of course, the main attraction here is Michelangelo’s Statue of David. In the hall going towards that statue, there were several unfinished marble sculptures that had been started by Michelangelo, but never finished before his death, and it was interesting to see them partially completed.
Since the crowds were controlled somewhat by ticket reservation times, it was not terribly crowded around the main attraction, The Statue of David. It is on a raised platform about seven feet off the ground, so the entire statue is above everyone’s head, and quite visible. It is a magnificent piece of marble sculpture. The most interesting thing for me was that the first time I saw the statue many years ago, sometime around 2001, you were prohibited from taking photos of it. There were attendants running all around inside shouting “No Photo” in heavy Italian accents as everyone tried to take a picture anyway. It had something to do with copyright issues involving the company who had paid for the restoration of the statue, they wanted all the rights to the photos to sell as souvenirs.
Obviously that was no longer the case, maybe the photo restriction had been in effect for a certain number of years, or, most likely, done in by the preponderance of cell phone cameras that would be impossible to control today.
After viewing the statue for a bit from all angles, and reading about it in the Rick Steve’s guidebook, we headed into another room that was a display for artwork that had been behind church altars in the Renaissance period called an “altar pieces”. They are typically painted on wood panels and contain a lot of gold gilding.
There was also a large room full of plaster busts of various people who lived during that time, as well as several large plaster statues. These were made before a marble statue was chiseled out, the plaster casts were used for dimensioning the marble sculpture. These plaster casts had what appeared to be rusty nails all over them, and these represented the measurement points for the real marble sculpture so that they could maintain dimensional accuracy. It all seemed like a lot of work, and made you appreciate the effort required to make a marble sculpture even more.
That completed our tour of the Accademia Gallery, so we headed across the street to the grocery store we had scouted out earlier and bought some breakfast items, yogurt and bananas, along with bar soap, white wine for our fridge, and some cheese and bread for a snack.
We took all of the supplies back to the room and rested a bit, we were still a little sore from all of our hiking in Riomaggiore. We enjoyed some red wine along with cheese and some of our leftover crackers, but the bread we had purchased was the most bland bread we had ever tasted. I worked on this post and Stephanie relaxed.
We then went out to walk around and try to find somewhere to eat dinner. Restaurants are everywhere in Florence, and they all seem to be about the same price. What varies is the price of bottles of wine, there is no inexpensive wine in restaurants in Florence. We did find a nice place on the Piazza Della Repubblica called the La Bistecca, but it was still too early to eat dinner. We would return when they were open for dinner at 7:00 PM.
We needed a bathroom break, and decided it was both faster and easier, and certainly cleaner, to walk back to the room than to try and find a public “WC” out on the streets. It was just a few blocks walk back to the room. With that taken care of we headed back out. First we went through a store called the Eataly which is apparently popular in large Italian cities. It is sort of like a food and wine mall, Italian style, but the restaurants are nice, and there are various wine stores and food stores all inside of the same building. It was ironic that we also found two restrooms in the Eataly, so now we know where to stop in the future.
We headed back to the Piazza Della Repubblica and got an outside table at the La Bistecca in their covered area on the square. We had a really friendly and funny waiter, Ilir from Albania. He kept us and the table next to us entertained for the entire meal. I ordered their gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce, with walnuts, and Stephanie got a twisted pasta dish that had a really spicy tomato sauce, and fresh roasted cherry tomatoes on top. We ordered a bottle of red wine and had a really nice dinner watching the street entertainment on the Piazza.
The restaurant had a really large display of aged beef, their specialty was steaks, and it was interesting to see the whole section of beef hanging in the special glass chillers. We did not know until later that Florence is known for its steaks, and this explained why we later saw several restaurants with large display cases of aged beef hanging inside them.
After dinner, we just strolled the streets looking at stores. We happened upon the Uffizi Gallery, which we are visiting tomorrow morning, so at least we now know how to get there. We headed back toward the Duomo and took some photos with the cell phone of the church, tower and baptistery, all well lit up for the night. I did not have my big camera, so we went back to the room and got it and we headed back to the Duomo to take a few more pictures. The quality of the photos was much better than the ones we took with the cell phone.
With that task completed, we headed back to the room, calling it a night for outside activities. We had a little more wine in the room and I worked on the blog and Stephanie did some research for our plan for tomorrow in Florence. We know we will have the tour of the Uffizi Gallery in the morning, but we did not really have a plan for what we would do afterward. We were pretty tired from the long day of travel, and turned in about 10:45 PM. Tomorrow, we will have to get up somewhat early to make it to the Uffizi Gallery for our 9:15 AM reservation.