So today was strange and I think this photo just about sums it up. We left Vienna at 7pm the night before and boarded a night train without sleeper tickets, so basically we knew that we were going to have to be sitting up the entire night. I got possibly an hour of sleep. Then at around 2am the man next to me worked out that the seats folded flat and managed to persuade us that we would all sleep better it we all folded our seats down so that they met in the middle.
THE MAN WAS WRONG! We now found ourselves in a compartment of 6 which now simply had a platform in which all of us had to sleep on. The hand is me, the foot is George and beside me was a man I had never met breathing on my shoulder all night. It was hot and stuffy and there is no way that there is any room in those compartments for six people. My advice for anyone travelling on night trains is couchettes are really great, we had a brilliant night's sleep. But please don't be tempted by the low prices of seats.
At one point in the evening it just got too hot so I climbed my way out of the web of tangled people and went into the corridor. I could literally not walk down it because so many people had chosen to sleep face down on the floor out there. It was odd and a little bit post-apocalypsey.
Anyway back to the first picture. When we arrived in Florence I was so exhausted. It was 6am, we weren't going to be able to dump our bags until midday and I was utterly exahusted. Seeing as I hadn't got any sleep on the train I'd had a lot of time to think. I missed my family lots and lots and I knew that as it stood I was only going to have two days with them once I got home before heading off to university. Also my shoes were broken. I decided we should cut the trip a bit short. George was really amazing and said that he didn't mind at all and so in a few hours we had booked a plane home for a few days time. It was such a relief to know that I was going home soon and it meant that I could enjoy Florence so much more.
Our hotel was practically opposite the Duomo. It was pretty amazing. It stands out in such a crazy way because it's so gleaming and elaborately tiled and yet nothing surrounding it looks at all similar. I pretty much thought it was the most amazing thing in Florence...
UNTIL I SAW THIS POSTCARD!
We had spent a lot of the morning sorting out flights and then had to have a bit of a leep to catch up on the terrible journey and so by the time we got out to see the city it was early evening. We thought we should cross something touristy off our lists though so we went to go and see the Ponte Vecchio. It's a pretty amazing bridge because along the sides are actually little tiny houses where people live.
It's also really wierd because it feels like you're just on a regular street.
The other touristy thing we had to do was eat as much gelato as possible. I loved the gelateries soooo much because they displayed their ice cream in the coolest way; all bounded up and overflowing. Sadly it was so hard to get a good photo of this as they didn't really like people snapping their treats.
After a little walk around we found ourselves at the Palazzo Pitti, which was shut so we just had a little sit down and people watched for a while. We spotted this man. His family were feeding the pigeons in such an excited way that we could only guess they had never seen pigeons before. He then decided to lay on the floor and his family proceeded to cover him in bread. The pigeons then crawled all over him. It was so odd.
We slowly wandered back to the hotel and ate pizzas outside the Duomo. It was really nice knowing we had cut our holiday short as we no longer had to budget like crazy. What I love is that all day we ate so touristy rubbish food and yet it tasted soooo good. Seriously, best pizza ever. Yum.
