Florence to Rome

Not much to report on today. We had another lovely breakfast, then checked out of Residenza Il Villino.



We took a cab to the train station:



From there, we had some overpriced sandwiches on the train to Rome. We arrived in Rome, walked to our apartment, and were met by our hostess Rosa. Rosa doesn't speak English, and we don't speak Italian, but I think she got across all of the important points. She did at one point call her daughter Michaela to talk with me.

Our apartment is on the top floor, with two bedrooms, a living/dining room, a tiny kitchen, and a split bath (toilet/bidet/sink in one room, shower/sink in another). It also has a washing machine in the kitchen, which we are making full use of after a week of doing laundry in bathroom sinks.

The air conditioning felt SO good after the hike from the train station! After we cooled off, John and I went out in search of a grocery store. Rosa had directed us to one, but we found another one on the way there, so decided to stick closer to home today. We bought all sorts of stuff: that packaged toast for breakfast, Nutella, bread, cheese, yogurt, ham, salami, juice, milk, pasta, pesto, pasta sauce, toilet paper, etc.

For dinner, we had pasta (bucatini, which looks like extra-thick spaghetti--it's what Beth had for dinner our first night in Venice), with a choice of pesto or red sauce, bread sticks, and bread. We completely forgot to buy any fruit or vegetables at the market, which we'll have to rectify tomorrow.

For internet access, we have to walk to a shop a couple streets down. I went there with Matt after dinner, and discovered that 1) they don't have wifi (so Matt was out of luck with his iPod Touch), and 2) it costs 2 euros an hour to use their computers, but 5 euros an hour to use our own laptop. Matt and I turned around and came home. The solution finally came to me a little while ago--the only reason I need the laptop is to upload photos and text to this blog, as I can read my email and everything else in any browser. I happened to pack a flash drive (so I could transfer some files to John's laptop, as he left for Lyon before I did), so if you're reading this it means I was successful in uploading everything from the flash drive.

Here are a couple of photos of the apartment. It looked a lot nicer before we showed up and dumped our luggage and laundry all over the place!