June 8: Travel to Ferrara

We checked out of the hotel, and walked over to the bus stop nearby. Two Firenze busses came at once, and we mistakenly got on the one that did not go directly to Firenze (live and learn!). So, after passing through Poggibonsi and a few other small towns, we finally arrived in Firenze.

We schlepped our stuff over to the train station and tried to figure out which train we could take to Ferrara.

The train station was completely packed because it was a Friday. Never travel on Fridays, especially towards popular destinations like the sea or Venezia (Ferrara is a stop on the way to Venezia). Live and learn!

We could not get a Eurostar train (one of the fast trains) because they were all completely booked. So we figured out which train would take us. Unfortunately, it was in ritardo by about an hour, so we had a couple of hours to kill in Firenze waiting for the train.

We checked our luggage, and went to find a bathroom. Kurt used the bathroom in the train station, for which he had to pay 800 lire. But for this price he got a nice packet of kleenex which would come in handy later. I went across the street to McDonald's, always a handy place for being able to go to the bathroom for free! Fortunately I had the kleenex in my purse because they had no paper in the bathrooms, a common occurrence.

After taking care of this we walked down the street to a snack bar to buy some lunch. Then we found a place to buy some more toothpaste and bandaids. (It took me a while to describe what I wanted since I didn't know the Italian word for "band-aid".)

We returned to the station and after a bit our train showed up. We hopped on the train and headed to Ferrara. We arrived in Ferrara around 5. Luca was scheduled to come home around 6.

We walked the short distance to Luca's house. I vaguely remembered how to walk there, having done it several times before. We got to the end of a street that didn't look that familiar, so I asked a woman in Italian where Via Primo Maggio was, and she explained to me that this was the street that we had just run into! (Street signs would be a real nice improvement!) From there we were able to easily find Luca's house. We let ourselves in.

Luca arrived shortly thereafter, and we went out to have a very nice pizza dinner at one of his favorite pizza restaurants. We then headed into town for some gelato, and finally returned home to do some laundry in a real washing machine!

Tomorrow we go to see his parents at their seaside house.