The weekend is quickly approaching, and with that brings the possibility of traveling. Not wanting to waste anytime, my roommate and some friend decided to make some trips to places close to Florence, as some sort of test-runs. We decided to just travel Friday and Saturday (since our school is super awesome and doesn't have classes on Friday for travel purposes), but our friends decided to skip the Friday plans because of the rain we're supposed to get. But my roommate, Rachel, and I are still determinded to head out! We fear no rain!
**Note I'm not putting names of places before we go there because this is the internet and there are creepy people lurking. Our family and school will only know beforehand. Pictures after the fact will clearly state where we went**
Rachel and I spent all last night researching the best ways to get to our two destinations, and set out today with an agendy. That agenda was originally mainly for finding art supplied stores around Florence, and a little bit of getting travel details situated. We needed to get bus tickets for the Saturday trip, and a train ticket for the Friday trip.
So we read that you buy bus tickets at any of the serveral Tobacchi shops around the city. After not finding any of the art supplies stores we were out looking for, we found ourselves outside of a Tobacchi shop and decided then was as good of a time as any to go inside and brave our minimal Italian vocabulary to buy tickets. The gentelman working inside was super nice, his english was good enough (he drew pictures when he couldn't think of the word) and after just a few minutes we found out that we had to go to the train station and find the bus ticket place by some big stone stairs (can you guess what he drew?).
That was no problem. We were planning on going there to get tickets for the other trip anyways. So we set of towards the train station. We saw buses entering and departing everywhere, but we didn't see anything that was about the specific line we needed, or that even sold bus tickets to places outside of Florence. We eventually got frustrated enough that we just ended up using the quick ticket machines to buy our train tickets. That process was super easy and successful.
With the confidence from that flowing through me, I approached a worker and asked where the ticket station was for our bus line. She seemed to know exactly what I was talking about and directed me simply "left and then right".
Cool! So simple!
Or not.
Her directions took us outside the other end of the train station where Rachel and I finally found the large stone steps we were directed to before. From ther we could see even more buses coming and going, so we figured that we were in the right direction.
But the only bus building we could find was for a different bus line. And I'm telling you, we looked hard. We walked EVERYWHERE. So we caved and decided on more awkward Italina-English interactions and walked into the wrong bus place and asked for the proper place. The lady here spoke excellent english and was again super helpful (most of the Flourentine people are) and simple directed us to "cross the street and second building on the left".
Once again confience was coursing through our veins, so we set out again, sure that we'd find the building this time! Unfortunately we jumped the gun on out exuberance and it took us a solid 20 more minutes to find the dingy other Tobacchi shop that sold the right tickets.
A few minutes and 31,20 euro later and we had a ticket there and back for Rachel and I.
Rachel, being who she is, was looking over our tickets as we walked away and stopped me. There was no date or tme stamped onto the ticket except for todays date. So we naturally started to panic that the tickets were date stamped for today and we could only use them today. And it didn't even say the name of the bus line.
I was hyperventillating to say the least. We supposedly just blew 30 euro and would then have to spend more to get a train and only spend a few hours at our destination, because clearly we weren't going to be able to find this bus line.
Seeing as it was already nearing 5pm and the rest of our day was a bust, we decided to at least stop by the school and find someone to talk to and see what we did wrong and what we should do instead.
The whole walk there I felt terrible for messing up, and kept telling Rachel that I'ld buy her the book we say in the vintage bookstore earlier (that place is amazing).
When we get to the school we were searching for who was still there, and found someone in the library whom I'd talk to before and who is always pleasant to talk to (though there isn't a worker there who isn't).
We started off by first asking if the line even existed, but as soon as we said the name of the bus, she immediately assured us that it was real. Then we showed her the ticket, and she so causally explain that we just go and validate them whenever we want to get on the bus and it would work. After quickly thanking her and scurring out of the library so she could get home, Rachel and I look at each other with the biggest grins possibly. Eyebrows raised as high as possible.
We did it right! It was the best thing to hear after walking around for 3 hours earlier (2 of them purely in search of these tickets) and thinking we had just wasted so much money.
With that weight off of our shoulders we were able to drag our aching feet home to finally relax and make outselves dinner.
Now we just have to get through all of our classes tomorrow an we'll be off on all new adventures!
Ciao!
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