Florence Day 1!

On our first day in Firenze, we huffed and puffed it! We took 3 trains from Cannes to get to Florence. The first one was at 7 am from Cannes to Ventimiglia, or Ventimille in French. (Ventimigila is a border city between France and Italy) In Ventimiglia, Pox had his 1st Euro bathroom experience. Basically, a hole in the floor with two steps on the floor and a string hanging from the ceiling to flush. We all know that Cindy didn't try that one. From Ventimiglia, we took a train to the luxury city of Milano. Based on all the travel books and info we read about Italy, we booked all of our train reservations in first class, mainly because second class is used by residents as an everyday means of transportation and first class is not so crowded. Well, first class or not, the a.c. didn't work in the coach that we were in, for FOUR hours. The train attendant came into our coach to offer everyone a seat in second class, their air conditioning was on at full blast. The very sharply, leopard-clad woman, sporting all the high-end designer labels imaginable responded to her with, " In seconda classe no!" (Not in second class!) A few hours later, after reading her provocative magazines, she was bored and began taking pictures of her friends cleavage with her cell phone. They were going to text them to another friend whom they were on their way to visit in Milano. Very interesting. Well, all we have to say about what we saw of Milano,...is that it's not so hot. It's was actually borderline "L.A.", if metropolitan and industrial are to your liking, then Milano is your city, for us, not so much.

From Milan, we took the train to Florence. The coach was air-conditioned and that's all that
mattered to us. What should have mattered was who we ended up sitting next to. When we made our train reservations, they sat us diagonally from each other, so Cindy ended up sitting next to an Italian man reading Giusseppe of Nazarith and humming along to his music. Very annoying. Right behind Pox, sat the spawn of the devil. They were the biggest brats ever. Undoubtedly, the most misbehaved children that we have ever seen. They were calling out the city names as loud as possible, talking to everyone that would pass them, but most importantly, yelling out "Vaffanculo" over and over. (If you have any kids reading this sorry!) Literally meaning, go f**k yourself. They were about 2 years-old, 4 years-old, and 6 years-old. We were so glad to get off the train.

Once in Florence, we found our apartment for the month of August, and were greated by Giovanni Battista Sensisni, our landlord, at the 1st of 3 doors that lead up to the 5th floor
apartment. We could not believe how many stairs we had to climb with all of our luggage.
Sixty stairs! The apartment is cozy to say the least. It is small, but nice and has all that we
need, especially air conditioning. After settling in, we went to Nilro Market on the corner and
bought some bare necessities. We got back to the apartment, cleaned up a little and Cindy made do with the ingredients that we had. She made a delicious dinner of spaghetti and coca cola. Yummo! After dinner, we slept like babies.