Meg, Max and Backpacks

Bologna Arriving We left our apartment in Florence with plenty of time until our train and with three contingency plans for reaching the station (an hour and a half's walk from the apartment). Our first plan was to catch the line 20 bus. From what we had seen so far, Florence's bus system was very effective, with every bus arriving on the dot or sometimes earlier than the scheduled time, and this was further proven as we stood at the bus stop and watched every incoming bus pull in on time. Every bus apart from ours, that is. We seem to have a knack for choosing the only bus or train with a delay, and this was the case now, as we watched a five-minute delay turn to ten and then twenty. Twiddling our thumbs and keeping an eye on the clock, we weighed up our options. When the second scheduled line 20 bus failed to show, we decided to head to a train station 24 minutes away. There were 2 trains that would take us to the station we needed on time: one was leaving in twenty minutes, ...

Florence: Even More Exploring Day 4: The Uffizi For a while, we had been yo-yo-ing back and forth about whether Uffizi Gallery tickets would be worth the price. With high popularity amongst tourists coupled with restricted visitor numbers due to COVID, the only way of guaranteeing a visit is to book in advance. This would set us back 24 euros each because as non-EU citizens, we are not eligible for the 18-25-year-old museum discounts (thanks a lot, Brexit). However, the Uffizi is such an iconic museum, and its central location meant that we had walked past it umpteen times, so decided to take the plunge and bought tickets for Sunday afternoon.  Before heading to the Uffizi, we spent the morning strolling through the Santa Croce district. This is an area to the far side of the Duomo which we had not yet visited, and which seems to be much less favoured by tourists. Here, the buildings look as old as they are, with peeling paint and crumbling doorsteps, and a distinct smell of sewage...

Pisa: More than just a Tower After just two full days in Florence, we had ticked off most of the key sights, so we decided that we should take a day trip to another Tuscan town. Having weighed up the pros and cons of different regional hotspots, we decided to buy train tickets to perhaps the most famous of all: Pisa. Part of the reason for this was the shorter and cheaper journey, but we were equally motivated by the weather - Florence was forecast to reach a crazy 35 degrees, and Pisa was predicted to be 5 degrees cooler. After our constant war with the heat, this felt like a shot at victory. Following a frustrating 20-minute delay, our train eventually rolled into the station and we climbed aboard. This train had two floors, and we headed straight to the top seats in search of the best views. It didn't disappoint. With this extra height, we could see over the tops of the hedges that bordered the railway line, and we had a perfect view of the surrounding countryside. It really was...

Florence Arriving: The train journey from Perugia to Florence took about 2 hours, and it passed uneventfully - due to the dense forests growing either side of the railway we only caught snippets of the Tuscan countryside, but when we did sneak a view, it was beautiful. The landscape here was luscious and green, and we wondered what the region's capital would look like in comparison. As we dismounted the train we were instantly hit with a wave of hot air. It was an uncomfortable 32 degrees, and whereas high temperatures in Perugia had been slightly eased by the mountain wind, here the heat was magnified as it reflected off of the tarmac. With our backpacks in tow, we broke a heavy sweat in the simple twenty minutes it took to reach the apartment. That said, the sweat might have been brought on when we took a wrong turn into a holding area for local buses, turned around to find the entrance had locked behind us, split up to try and find help, and then sprinted to the gates when a bem...