Lawrenceville, NJ to Florence, Italy

I keep a travel diary to use as a base for blogging once I come home. It might be easier to retype my thoughts and add photos. We'll see how this transpires.

What a long day!

Palm Sunday worship at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville.

Ashley worshipped at the Duomo, and actually sent us pictures. Before heading to the airport I read a book and relaxed. We picked up Panera on our way to Newark Airport.

(Backtrack: in January we applied for and received Global Entry, which includes TSA precheck. This was our first experience using it.) 

TSA precheck was a breeze! We still had to take off jackets, and it felt chaotic in the zone with the trays, even with keeping our shoes on, and our liquids and laptop in our bags. Easily saved us half an hour..

Unfortunately our flight was delayed nearly two hours -- right after I booked a train ride from the airport to Milano Centrale so we could catch our train from Milan to Florence to see Ashley.

Sat at a high top with "the honeymooners," later we learned their names are PJ and Amber. I later gave them my card, so they might be reading this -- Hi, PJ and Amber! Hope you had wonderful adventures. Their wedding was delayed from fall 2020, then their honeymoon was delayed.

At the airport I bumped into Noelle -- a friend from Open Door Publications. She and her family were on our flight to Milan, though their travels were taking them north while we went south.

Despite a two hour delay, our plane arrived an hour late. I know, they build a cushion in, but it is still stressful when you are in the plane and it is all out of your control with the next big wild card (security/passport control) still looming.

We had a nice crew. They joked around some. Despite not paying to choose seats we once again sat next to each other. Unfortunately it was the middle of four seats in the second to last row. The woman to my right was leaning into my space as she slept. There was also a lot of turbulence (not enough to make us sick). On the flight I watched the movie "Peace by Chocolate" about a refugee Syrian family in Canada who built a thriving chocolate business by the same name. It is based on a true story (link to their business and not to the movie).

While waiting in the Tutti Passportes line, we were told citizens over the age of 14 from a bunch of different countries (including the United States) could go to to the self-serve line. That saved us at least half an hour! We missed the 10:26 train, but caught the 11:13 train to Milano Centrale, which gave us half an hour to catch our 12:40 pm high speed train to Florence -- Whew! I was happy to see the honeymooners were able to catch their train to their next destination. Noelle and her family were staying in Milan for the night.

Around 2:45 pm Ashley met us outside the Florence train station on the side by the 24-hour McDonalds (which we did not go into) and walked us around the corner to our AirBnB. Though situated in the heart of Florence, we didn't once hear a siren or party scene. It was so delightful.

I made breakfast each morning. A couple of evenings when we were running late we were able to do take out and eat at home. A tiny kitchen with no oven made it a challenge to make much more than pasta or eggs.

Our host lives in the apartment next to ours. Through the magic of Google Translate, she and her assistant explained how all of the appliances worked -- including the heater (much needed) and the washing machine. We were so tired it helped she left a book behind with pictures and instructions.

We had a quick visit with Ashley before she had to go to class. She took us to the Central Market -- a two-story mecca for foodies. The downstairs farmers market was closed for the day, but upstairs had a chic food court with local vendors. I was too tired to absorb any of it. At that point I would have been happy to sit at a table and have Ashley bring me food to try -- even if it was lampredotto, so long as she didn't tell me what it was before I ate it. (Lampredotto is the lining of a cow's stomach boiled until it is soft enough to eat, it is a local delicacy). I found a quiche, Donhad a pizza, and Ashley also ate lunch.

She gave us a quick tour of the highlights of her life in Florence, including showing us the door to her first apartment (which was broken into a couple of weeks before we arrived). The door has been fixed and has a brand-new security camera on it, but the students had to move about 20 minutes away to the other side of the Arno River.

We walked around Florence with our eyelids propped open and sleepy smiles on our faces. Happy to see Ashley, but oh so sleepy from a long day of traveling with little sleep. When Ashley went to class, we went to the apartment to shower, change, and recharge. 

Before Ashley left for Florence, I gave her one major task: identify your favorite gelato place and share it with us when we arrive in a few months. A challenge she accepted with GUSTO!

As we headed out for the evening at 7 pm we texted Ashley to see if she wanted to meet us for gelato.  Much to our pleasure, she said YES, meet at the Ponte Vecchio and she would bring us to her favorite gelato place: La Strega Nocciola. Because I keep notes on the important things in life, Don and I had Mayan (which is dark chocolate with pepper), lavender, and Aztec (white chocolate with cinnamon). They are an artisanal gelato place, more importantly it is Ashley's favorite gelato place in Florence.

On our first night we learned how much more magical a city feels after the tourists go home. Or, since we are tourists, let's call them "day trippers," the people who go home and say "they did Florence" without stepping foot in the city after the sun goes down at 7:30 PM.

My notes continue with a string of arrows as my thoughts were all over the place as I wrote notes before falling asleep:  

• As we walked to meet up with Ashley we saw someone singing opera music. On the Ponte Vecchio we heard jazz music. As the trip continued we saw many buskers, even seeing repeats of the same performers. Don commented it felt like MusikFest. He would love to live someplace with free music happening openly each night. I explained with the free music comes tourists, and we might grow tired of them.
• We saw the outside of he building where she had class that night. If I'm smart, I'll pretend this is my first day of the semester picture.
  
• We saw the outside of her new apartment, but by then it was 10 PM and too late to go upstairs.

Among the highlights of the Ashley Tour was seeing her favorite square and her favorite coffee shop.

Those of you paying attention to our adventures will realize it is after 10 PM (4 PM according to our stomachs) and we have not yet had dinner. After leaving Ashley we used Google Maps (how did we travel before this technological advance?) and wandered into a couple of places asking if it was too late for dinner (it was in the first couple). At the third place, the owner said "Come on in!" (or was it prego, which we still have not figured out how to use properly?) The person running the front of house looked stunned that we wanted to sit down for dinner at 10:45 pm (hey, we were told Italians ate late), so we compromised on take away and ordered two pizzas and tipped well. We were glad to bring it to our apartment and store the leftovers for another time.

We are on the other side

Our AirBnB hostess has a second apartment she rents. Ours was Duomo side. The other is Courtyard side (Corti). I'm sure it is just as charming. On two evenings they were talking later and louder than I preferred. Not bad that it was only two of the evenings. We probably annoyed them on other times. The rest of the building seemed to be empty, undergoing construction that also never bothered us. We never had a wait for the elevator.

My last note for the day was a prediction that did come true: Very windy -- will wear all our layers on this trip!

We brought spring clothes for Ashley, and brought home winter clothes. I packed t-shirts optimistically thinking summer would come back (it had reached Florence the week before our trip), and went home with t-shirts unworn. I should have packed one more sweater and another pair of jeans. No room in the suitcase for more.