I booked 1st class tickets from Rome to Florence, a 1 hour 35 minute train ride, nonstop. We had a whole lotta luggage… 4 huge luggage nearing 23 kg apiece plus our individual carry-ons, laptop and purses/backpacks. We’ve heard “You don’t travel light!” many times on our trip already from strangers to taxi drivers and train/airline employees. The taxi driver who drove us to Rome Termini had said it, and couldn’t fit all the luggage in the trunk, so Dad had a 23 kg luggage on his lap (more like it was lying on him) during the 5 minute ride over from our vacation rental.
We ate breakfast at the station, and the prices were actually really cheap! 3.3 euros gets you a cappuccino,
orange juice, and a croissant!
There’s also this kooky lookin’ pastry (reminds me of a silkworm), that is stuffed with either Nutella or cream, for 1 euro (although I almost gagged when eating it, because a shard of the flake got caught in my throat… it’s like a crunchier and much harder filo dough):
The platform number is not listed until 20 minutes before the scheduled departure, so there is a mad rush of people getting to the platform when the number is finally posted. Next to our train number was “1CLTESTA” and some other trains had “1CLCODA,” and for the longest time we couldn’t figure out what that meant… a special platform? It turns out that 1CLTESTA means the 1st class carriages are at the head of the train (naturally, with our luck, the head of the train is at the very end of the platform :T as it departs the station head-first) and 1CLCODA means 1st class carriages are at the end of the train (aaaahhhh… now I remember from piano class!).
There was a lady standing on the platform, and she asked what class we were in. We thought she was a TrenItalia employee and helping out lost tourists (although we weren’t lost!) and she told us to follow her… although there is only one direction to the train carriage! She then helped us load our luggage onto the train, and after we got seated… proceeded to demand 20 euros for her efforts! Oh my freakin’ God! I refused to pay, but she wouldn’t leave! I took out 5 euros, she refused and said 5 euros PER LUGGAGE so I got into an argument with her, until Dad took 10 euros out and then she knew we’d be good for the rest of the money (Italians think tourists are easy prey and wimps… that tourists avoid conflict with cash… which unfortunately, is true in our case as well… I can’t believe we were scammed!). We were so pissed for the entire train ride, and plus with our collective experiences over the past few days in Rome, we vowed never to return to this damn country again and to stop infusing tourist money (aka pretty much their entire GDP) into their economy. The situation was so angering that we just about didn’t get to enjoy the 1st class experience (which apparently is a LOT better than 2nd class, as Italians kept attempting to sit in 1st without paying for it and kept getting booted back down by the ticket attendant… the ticket attendant didn’t bothering checking the tickets of obvious tourists, and only checked Italians for their tickets! LOL).
Cheer up, Angel! Don’t let that Italian bitch ruin our trip!
I guess chocolate always helps ^.^
But, the attendants came around with beverage offerings and snacks and candy. The red wine was excellent, as was the sparkling. My god, I’ve never had such good Italian red wine before! It went down sooooo smoothly, not at all tannic! Mom loved the sparkling wine. The snacks were good too~ a salty pretzel-like Italian cracker and fruity-flavored gummies.
Upon arriving at Firenze Santa Maria Novella Stazione, I had to find a telephone to call the vacation rental manager to let her know we’d arrived. For the life of me, I couldn’t get my calling card to work. I asked the tourism office, but their policy didn’t allow tourists to call from their phones. The police station had a sign posted in front that said “No Information” so I thought we were out of luck… until I walked up to 2 police officers and asked for their help. They looked at my packet of information, escorted me inside the police station (behind the “Police Only” doors! ^.^), not only dialed the number for me, but explained everything to the rental manager in Italian! I was very thankful for their hospitality and it immediately improved our day
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