01/12/2009 7:55 a.m. Fiesole
I woke up before my alarm, so I decided to get up and write. I'm still adjusting to the seven hour time difference, I guess. In my last post I mentioned that I had quite the adventure yesterday. This adventure entailed getting lost in Florence. Br. Bob, the program director walked our group through Fiesole and into Florence yesterday morning. He then gave us directions to the Duomo, a large cathedral dome in the center of the city where there is a bus stop. However, Carla and I got separated from the rest of the group in a supermarket and we were on our own. Luckily we had a map, so we weren't completely clueless. It is difficult to get your bearings in the city though because it was built in ancient times and it isn't really on the grid system. Also, there are many tall buildings with no gaps between them, so when you are on a street you cannot see what lies to the left or right.
We wandered around all day, using the little Italian we knew to ask for directions. We ended up eating pizza sitting on the curb by a dumpster because we were so hungry and we couldn't find a bench, although benches seemed to spring up all over after that when we had our eyes out for them. Finally, around 2:00 pm we saw a dome, and we thought for sure that it was the Duomo. It was on the other side of the river, so we crossed the bridge and found the cathedral. However, it turned out to be the wrong dome. I looked at the map and realized we were on the wrong side of the river, so we crossed again. We ended up in the high fashion district of Florence. Carla tried on some Ferragamo shoes and I had to pull her away from the other shops because we needed to find the bus stop so that we could make our 6:00 pm meeting back at the hotel. Finally around 4:00 pm we found the Duomo and located the bus stop, and it's a good thing because we were both dead on our feet by then. We rode the bus back to Fiesole and made it back about a half hour before our meeting. My estimate is that we walked over ten miles yesterday!
I woke up before my alarm, so I decided to get up and write. I'm still adjusting to the seven hour time difference, I guess. In my last post I mentioned that I had quite the adventure yesterday. This adventure entailed getting lost in Florence. Br. Bob, the program director walked our group through Fiesole and into Florence yesterday morning. He then gave us directions to the Duomo, a large cathedral dome in the center of the city where there is a bus stop. However, Carla and I got separated from the rest of the group in a supermarket and we were on our own. Luckily we had a map, so we weren't completely clueless. It is difficult to get your bearings in the city though because it was built in ancient times and it isn't really on the grid system. Also, there are many tall buildings with no gaps between them, so when you are on a street you cannot see what lies to the left or right.
We wandered around all day, using the little Italian we knew to ask for directions. We ended up eating pizza sitting on the curb by a dumpster because we were so hungry and we couldn't find a bench, although benches seemed to spring up all over after that when we had our eyes out for them. Finally, around 2:00 pm we saw a dome, and we thought for sure that it was the Duomo. It was on the other side of the river, so we crossed the bridge and found the cathedral. However, it turned out to be the wrong dome. I looked at the map and realized we were on the wrong side of the river, so we crossed again. We ended up in the high fashion district of Florence. Carla tried on some Ferragamo shoes and I had to pull her away from the other shops because we needed to find the bus stop so that we could make our 6:00 pm meeting back at the hotel. Finally around 4:00 pm we found the Duomo and located the bus stop, and it's a good thing because we were both dead on our feet by then. We rode the bus back to Fiesole and made it back about a half hour before our meeting. My estimate is that we walked over ten miles yesterday!
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