Day 18 – Rome/Florence

We woke up early enough we thought, but obviously not as early as anyone else. I tried to be quiet and respectable when going to the shower and to get breakfast, only to figure out the whole hostel was deserted and everyone had left earlier. We didnt complain. We packed our bags, got ready to leave and called in to our usual shop for our croissants. This time the girl had every option ready for us and today my girlfirend threw a spanner in the works – ordering a sugar doughnut as well as our 2 croissants – and the girl didnt have a clue for ages (she had no English vocabulary at all). Thankfully enough pointing and head nodding was enough to get what everyone wanted and we were off to the train station.

The queue was massive to reserve trains so we thought we would have a go at the self surface machines – we didn’t know if we could do it this way as before, we would always go to the ticket desk and let them do it for us, even though sometimes that took ages. I asked my girlfriend for the Interrial passes and she couldn’t find them. Must be in the big bags. We checked the top of ours bags and the accessible pouches, double checking our smaller bags with no luck. We then took some clothes out and checked in the main pouch too. No luck. My first thought was that it was back in the hostel, maybe in the bin where I put the old receipts and maps we no longer needed. My girlfriend thought we left them on the train to Rome but I doubted that very much.

Whilst she continued to check our bags, I called our hostel owner and asked him if he was in and had he thrown out the rubbish yet. His English was so simple that the only reasons I was ringing had to have been that I was checking in later, or that I was looking to book. He kept saying come back at 3 no matter what I said. Angrily, I hung up and we both decided to go back to the hostel instead of one of us – that way we could both check our bags in our rooms rather than the middle of the train station. The main door to the apartment block was open and we knew where the spare key was hidden so we got back in without any bother.

The hostel was still empty and I rushed to the bin and found nothing. Next, we emptied our whole bags on the bed. There were the Interrail Passes, on top of my jeans and raincoat,  near the bottom of my bag. We were both overjoyed but I should have remembered putting them there when I unpacked the first night – it all came back to me then. Anyway, we left the hostel for hopefully the final time and made it back to the train station. Hopefully that is all the chaos we have to experience today!

We waited in the queue again to get a number and a young girl came up to us, politely asking if we needed help. When she realised we just needed to reserve tickets, she was adamant that she could help us and took us to the nearest machine.  Following her, she qucikly went through the steps (it was so much easier this way) and weirdly clicked on business class. She did it that fast that my girlfriend didn’t even notice but I saw that the standard class was the same price beside it. Maybe there were no 2nd class seats left? After booking and printing the tickets, she took us to the departure poster, the departure screen and then even to our platform. Sometimes you get really nice people in the world. Wrong! Out of nowhere she said “Now Mister, you owe me €10 each for my help”. After picking my girlfriend’s jaw off the floor, I fought back saying how she hadn’t mentioned this ‘hidden’ cost and if she did we would have declined. Learning from my mistake with the rose dealer, I smartly hid my €50 note in my wallet and said even if I wanted to pay you I don’t have any money. The cute helpful girl didnt budge so I gave her €3 in lose change and let her decide to take it or leave it. She wasn’t happy that we had done this but at the end of the day she got €3 for being a little bitch.

When we got onto the train, instead of the usual travellers we sat with, we were accompanied by business men in suits with their laptops and newspapers, some in the middle of a phone meeting. Then there were the two of us, in shorts and sweaty tops with massive rucksacks on our back. Someone looked out of place… Sitting down on massive leather seats that could have fitted 3 people, I started getting worried as we have 2nd class tickets and are in a business class cabin. After some research online, interrail had told passengers that even if 2nd class was sold out, they weren’t allowed in 1st class or above. That girl is still making our live difficult and she isn’t even here anymore! I looked up the price of the tickets and was certain we would have to pay the €189 for business class, or worse.

My girlfriend tried to calm me down and that we could only explain everything and tell the truth. I had planned to say that the man at the desk did it for us, but the ticket quite clearly said self-service. Telling the truth actually worked though. The inspector was nice and told us that we shouldn’t be here but just don’t do it again. I could then enjoy my comfy seat in a child free, quiet cabin, looking at the beautiful countryside of hills, rivers and vineyards that even my girlfriend admitted looked nice. We made our way to our accommodation for the night in Florence, it was actually an old convent, that looked exactly like it did many years ago. Massive long empty corridors with doors everywhere and communal toilets at the end. It was still a nice hostel, it could have been worse!

Weirdly, our room number was 313. The same number as our Naples hotel and the same number as my marathon number. I really wanted to do the lottery after this but couldn’t find it anywhere – surely that was a sign? Walking 30mins into town to have dinner and then back again, we probably should have just ate close by in hindsight, but I got my first experience of Florence and I loved it. My favourite city was literally on my doorstep, as was the stadium of Fiorentina, only 500m away. We had dinner in a restaurant beside a window, which opened out onto the street and we could people watch whilst enjoying our pizza. I have had pizza to eat in 4 out of 6 meals recently. That’s what Italy does to you.

Back in the convent, I had a huge beer for €3 and my girlfriend had a tiny Smirnoff ice for €4 – if only she would like beer – and rang our parents and told them all the ‘craic’. As parents do, they put us under pressure about money, and we actually hdn’t checked our bank accounts since we left. We decided to leave the garden and head back to the room, where we looked up our bank accounts and to our horror, we had spent quite a bit – quite a lot actually – and decided we really need to eat in more and spend less money – no more getting ice cold drinks at the side of the street if we wanted to. Before going to sleep, we tried to budget for the rest of the trip. If only we could stick to it.