Escapades of Firenze....

Today we left Rome for Florence. Our trip there was a comedic adventure that Sir Monty Python would appreciate. First we had to trek our way from our hostel to the train station to pick up our rental car, which was fine until we waited in the wrong line for a good 15 minutes. Then once we got all of our paper work figured out and signed the Europcar employee handed Tuk the keys and instructed her that our car was right outside the door. First, lets just note how the door we were actually allowed to use was 20 meters from the Europcar kiosk. Once we were finally outside we had to hunt around for our car, repeatedly clicking the lock button on the key ring to see if any lights would go off to indicate which car was ours. Finally after about 10 minutes of being thrust out into the world with no luck of finding our car a different Europcar employee came out and we were able to ask him to find it. Thaaanks Europcar!

Once inside our snazzy Fiat 500 we proceed to attempt to get out of our exceedingly tight parking space (video will follow later). Buuut lo and behold! some lovely Italian driver appears in their car and tries to double park and block us in. Silly driver. Finally Tuk gets out of the car and taps lovely Italian driver's window and asks to move so we can get out. Which then takes us a good couple of minutes in which we are stared at by our now captive audience. So anyways we make it onto the highway after some particularly stressful roundabouts and one ridiculous traffic jam (also see video later).

Now the highway- that was a blast. While quite picturesque, it was filled with more craycray Italian drivers jetting about, intensely tailgating, and often driving in the middle of two lanes around curves. Definitely made for some steeeeamy situations and hateful stares at the Americans. We finally arrive in Florence and our plugging along to our GPS directions in search of our hostel, when we find ourselves on these teeny, tiny narrow roads packed with strolling people. We finally get to a place where it appears we can parallel park so someone can get out and find where the heck we are supposed to stay for the next two nights. As you can imagine, parking was quite the ordeal. Luckily we were able to find it but of course that was not a place we could legally continue to park. Sooo back into our little Fiat friend we hopped and off we went according to our GPS directions.

We were bumping along many little one way, cobble-stoned streets greatly confused as to where our GPS was directing us. Especially once we began to become surrounded by people as they walked around shopping. Somehow we had stumbled into a pedestrian area only...which apparently none of the pedestrians could manage to inform us of. Instead they did what we have discovered people love to do to us... STARE. Meanwhile myself and Luk are hiding behind our hands in embarrassment while poor Tuk has to try to navigate around un-moving shoppers. We eventually reach a square that we semi-zoom across in the hopes of reaching a safe place for cars. However, about halfway across the square we are flagged by a police officer who taps on our window. As we roll it down he looks at us in contempt and says "This is a pedestrian area only" while simultaneously motioning with his fingers a little person walking about. Thanks you officer we had NOOO IDEA. Of course out loud we simply said that we were extremely sorry, and we were lost, and we had no idea how to get out of here. Eventually it came out that we were trying to reach the Piazza della Michaelangilio; he proceed to tell us "oh yes, extremely easy" to get there and gave us directions, mainly consisting of look for the signs.

Finally able to exit the pedestrian area only we amble along up a mountain to Michaelangilio's Plaza, are able to park for free, and can now trek back down the mountain for our 20 minute walk to the hostel.

As you can see we are having a blast and a half in Florence so far.. more to come!