April 11 -- from Lari to Florence

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On our way to Florence!  More little trees, marching in straight lines.

Trees and houses seen from the highway.

This road had a lot of these little pull-over places.  It didn't say they were for emergencies, so we weren't sure if they were "emergency only" or "it's ok to stop and sniff the breeze" (or catch a nap)....

This is a tighter crop of the above, and if you look closely, you can see there is a dark-colored car parked in there.

Firenze bound!

Do you remember Francesco?  The entertaining young man I sat next to, on the plane to Venice?  He had quite a rant about English-speakers calling this place "Florence."  "Why 'Florence'?  'Florence' does not sound at all like 'Firenza!'  Why?  No Italian can understand it!  'Florence!'  It sounds like a girl name!"

I assured him it *is* a girl name, and told him that one of my grandma's sisters was named Florence......  We established that my grandma's family was from Germany, and had spoken German in the home when the girls were growing up.  That my grandma's name was Gertrude, and I had no idea why one of her sisters was named Florence....

He was fun to talk to, and made the hours of that long flight shorter.



Love these trees....  You can see that these little pull-over places are very short.  Cars coming out of them can't be going very fast.

One last little town seen from the highway.

One last field of fennel.

I believe this is our first glimpse of Florence.

Yep!

The next one was taken within a minute of the previous.  Olive trees, close to Florence.

I don't know where all the city boundaries are.  We are within the Florentine metroplex, if not in Florence itself.  I wonder if the people who live in these apartments garden in this space between their buildings and the highway.

This was the one time we fed Ugo.  We really didn't drive very far.  We didn't drive more than an hour and a half, from one place to the next, I think.

It says "self-service" but a nice young man in a coverall-type uniform came rushing up to help.  We were just as glad to just let him do it.

I am sure Ugo was much thirstier than a Smart Car would have been, but given how much safer he was, especially on the highway (right next to semi trucks!), I think feeding him was a bargain.



The Ponte all'Indiano is the first earth-anchored cable-stayed bridge in the world.  Who knew.  I didn't, until I looked it up just now, writing this post!  I could tell it was not your ordinary bridge, but didn't realize it was a trail-blazer.

Looking through the railings at the Arno.

I will show you this, and then draw a curtain over the next hour(ish).

Suffice it to say that getting to the rental-car return would be non-trivial even if there were no traffic.  The signage, for once, was marginal.  Does "rent car" mean "this way to rental car return"???  (Yes, it does, but we weren't sure for a long time after the first time we saw it....)

There were multiple times when you merged into four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, needing to be in the far lane in about 100 feet.  IF the signage was meaningful.....  Note that only a few brake lights are on -- all of this traffic was moving right along.....

Harrowing.

Persisting valiantly, despite extreme frustration -- merging and looping, looping and merging -- we did, at last, end up in the right place.  Huzzah!



I can't remember if I mentioned, back when we got Ugo, that we took out all seven of the head rests we weren't using.  (My, that seems like a long time ago, even though it was only on April 7!  Haven't we done a LOT of wonderful things since then??  We couldn't have gone to all of the amazing places we visited, in those four days, without our own wheels....)

We could see MUCH better without all those obstructions behind us.  When we finally arrived at the rental car return, we put back that forest of head rests, collected our baggage, and found the correct place to officially return Ugo.  Thank you, Ugo, for taking good care of us, and cheerfully going everywhere we wanted to go!  You were perfect.



We were very glad to get a shuttle from the rental-car place to the airport.  Very glad to let someone else, who knew just where to go, navigate the loops and the merging, and the merging and the loops, while we rested comfortably, knowing someone else was handling the driving.  We had expected that driving to the airport would not be a problem.  (It wouldn't have been, in Bologna....)  We hadn't realized getting near the airport in Florence would involve so much city traffic!  It was a relief to be able to leave big-city driving to someone else.



We are now waiting outside the airport for the shuttle to the middle of Florence.  The red numbers on that gray pillar say it's 18:33 (6:30 pm). 

We were there by 6:30, but a bus didn't show up until 7:00.  I bet the previous one was full, and left a little early.

We were just as glad to have a little time to just sit and be quiet and not have to go anywhere or find anything.

We ate the last of the carrots we bought in Bologna, and shared a granola bar we bought in Ann Arbor, and waited, safe and dry and not-too-warm-not-too-cold.

This is my trusty traveling backpack.  It has a waist belt (not just a strap, but a padded belt), which lets the bulk of the weight rest on my pelvis, rather than my shoulders.  It is a wonderful thing to take, when you're going to be away from home for three weeks!

The shuttle bus arrived, right at 7:00 (or 1900, to stay in the vernacular). 

The driver scolded everyone who didn't have exactly 6 euros for the fare.

(Digression -- In my vast experience (from this one trip...), Italians do not like to make change.  Hand them a big bill -- like a 20, if you aren't buying much -- and they are not shy about asking if you don't have something smaller.  Even in a grocery, where they have a cash register telling them what to do, and a drawer full of money right at hand.

This shuttle went from the *airport* into town.  A huge percentage of the people just got off airplanes, many of them arriving from the States.  The euros a lot of people had were newly acquired -- in big bills.  No coins.  (There are one- and two-euro coins, but no bills smaller than five euros).

This has to happen to this driver every single trip he makes, from the airport into town, but he scolded every single person who didn't have any euro coins for him.

He was, in fact, able to make change.  (We sat right in front; I watched.)  Which didn't stop him from making it clear to every passenger that he felt they should have exact change.

I don't know what it's like in the UK now, but when we were there in 1985, people were flummoxed when we handed them extra money so they wouldn't have to make fiddly change.  If we owed 10 pounds and five pence, and gave them a 20 and five pence, so they could hand us a 10 in change, few people knew what to do.  We'd explain, to general bafflement.  We heard the equivalent of "You Yanks, with your weird ideas!"  Over and over.

Italians, in the places we visited in 2013, were very pleased the same sort of transaction.  They knew exactly what to do.

Isn't it interesting, which things are different, from place to place (and/or time to time)?
(End of Digression)


All of us waiting to take the shuttle into Florence were duly scolded, and we and our baggage were loaded on the bus.  The shuttle efficiently took us to the train station, which is centrally located.

Our apartment was an easy walk from the train station.  Not as easy when hauling baggage through crowds, on narrow sidewalks, but not bad.

My daughter had been texting our landlord's friend, who was to let us in, to apologize for being late, and to keep him informed as to our location and ETA.  She sent him one last text as we arrived outside the apartment, and he came right over.  (He lived just around the corner.)

He let us in, and showed us how things worked, and gave us the keys.

We were exhausted.  We'd noticed several slice-of-pizza type food places on our way to the apartment, so we turned around and went right back out to grab something to eat.  That was easily accomplished.  We brought sandwiches back to our apartment, ate, got hydrated, took showers, and went to bed.

Buona notte!



In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.

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