Our first 5 days were near Tirrenia on Italy's west coast. The hotel website had promised 'relaxing in the gardens' which would have been fine if the 'gardens' hadn't been entirely placed between the smoking area and the A1 which ran right past it... Still, there's always the 'wander through the pine groves to the beach', eh? The pine groves were somewhat scruffy bits of wood where you could hear the road constantly and were only 100 yards wide, and the beach was, as one Brit was overhead to say 'rather structured'. Yes, structured, that's the word for it:
We arranged to borrow bikes one day but the message got lost between us reserving them and the day shift turning up, so two German women got them instead. We should have put our towels on them... We were offered the last remaining bike, but we declined:
Well, it wouldn't have gone with the Lycra, would it?
So instead of doing 'relaxing' we found a local cafe which did excellent ice cream, coffee and wine. We consumed copious amounts of each, to the extent that the waitress, by our last day, simply waved the wine bottle at us and we gave her the thumbs up before finding our table...
Train journeys, Italian style:
On the middle Sunday we left Tirrenia by local bus (no problem) for Pisa then train to Florence. Bought tickets with no problem, got on train, had to stand and the whole carriage smelled of cat's wee. At Empoli (small town, middle of nowhere) loads of people were getting out so at last we got a seat. Which lasted precisely 1 minute until someone translated the intercom message which said the train was stopping due to an accident further on down the line and we all had to get off. So we got off. Apparently the same message had said that buses would be provided to take us on to Florence. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Not only were there no buses, but no taxis either. In the little sleepy town of Empoli, nothing happens on Sundays. Ever. After an hour another train arrived and decanted another 300 passengers, and still there were no buses or taxis. However we phoned ahead to our hotel in Florence who very kindly sent a car to rescue us. With no charge - hooray! We were very grateful and wondered how we could repay them...
A balanced diet:
Endless supplies of ice-cream (we tried not to repeat flavours, but really the peanut butter ice-cream just had to be tried twice more to make sure it was as good as the first time), endlessly flowing cheap but delicious wine and excellent fresh pasta. Yum, yum and YUM. We found a fantastic food hall over the equally fantastic central market in Florence - fresh seafood, beef, pasta, veggie stuff, pizzas made on the spot, more ice-cream and tiny weeny beautiful choux pastry sweets. So tiny you had to have several, obviously... A central bar for wine, prosecco, beers, coffee and hot chocolate. Choose what you like from any stalls and sit where you like on long trestle tables meeting and chatting with locals. Why can't we do food halls like that over here? Spud-U-Like and KFC will never be able to match it.
And the garage...
The hotel who had rescued us from the train station had a favour to ask... They were extremely fully booked of slightly older French guests and would we mind moving, for our last two nights, to the slightly further away annexe ("Eet's verry nice...."). Of course we said yes and then discovered that it was, um, a garage.
And it was next to a multi-storey car park...
Favour repaid, I think?
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