Day 19 – Florence

Today we were to meet our friends in Florence and stay with them for two nights in an apartment. It is much cheaper this way as there would be 5 of us. We knew that they weren’t going to be here until this evening, but we had to meet the owner and get the keys off at around 11am. We allowed ourselves to lie in for a while and then I had the best shower yet! Although the shower was basically touching my bed in the room, it was so nice and much better than at home!

As usual, we left and got our croissants. As my girlfriend paid for them in the shop, I had to awkwardly entertain a street performer outside. You would think it would be the other way around. Thankfully my girlfriend saved me by coming out, and we headed towards the new apartment. It was about 20-30mins away by walking but we had nothing better to do so saved money on a bus and walked it.

When we arrived, we didn’t know we had arrived. There was a gate with the number, but there were several buzzers for apartments, none of which had the name that we were given. We moved down the street and that confirmed that our first apartment was ours. Our friends had booked this and so all contact went through them. It was a bit of an inconvenience as I had to ring them to ring her, to ring them to ring us….thankfully, not long after, an exited cleaner arrived and shouted words like “apartment”, “yes”, “follow”. Guessing that was him?

He took us up to the apartment and showed us around. He spoke absolutely no English but we could easily identify the differences between a bedroom and the kitchen. The place was not cleaned though, and they had told us to come back at 1pm or around then to give them time to clean. That was fine, only an hour or so. We left him and his wife to clean and went into town. All the places for lunch seemed to expensive now that we had a kitchen, so after a small walk, we went to a shop and got some food for lunch to cook in the apartment. We timed it perfectly and were back at 1.

The cleaner was still there however, much to our disappointment. Our excuse for being back was that we needed to put all this food in the fridge and thankfully that was allowed. We didn’t think they would take that long so we went back outside, across the road and sat up on a wall opposite the apartment. This way we could see if they had finished or not, rather than awkwardly going up again. We sat there until 2.07pm – a full hour later – and couldn’t see them anymore and assumed they would be finished. They were but were just in the process of leaving the main building. I thought I would be nice and offer them help with their cleaning equipment, just to get them out of the place sooner. Of course he spoke no English, so using a translator on my phone, I asked if he would like help with his cleaning stuff. He said “Si, ok”.

After telling his wife something in Italian, he told me to follow him and I did what he said. We left the main building and walked down the street that would take us to our convent hostel. I walked beside him – in silence – for another 10mins until we arrived at a supermarket…Well, this wasn’t what I was expecting. I tried to explain that this is not what I meant, but my phone had died and I had no translating option. He had to ring the apartment owner who talked to me, and then she explained to the cleaner. Talk about an awkward moment. He was not happy and thought that I had asked for him to help buy some cleaning equipment for me.

The return journey was better. I said sorry repeatedly and found out that he was actually from Peru but lives in Florence because there was better money here, aiming to save up and go somewhere else in Italy. When we got back, he complained to his wife and showed us the flat yet again, but finally he left, and I could enjoy my lunch that my girlfriend had cooked during the time I was away.

When the three girls arrived, we went to the shop to get food for dinner (my fourth visit today!). They were already impressed with our tan and surprised that we hadn’t sunbathed really and looked like this. They were also impressed with my local knowledge of Florence and I had offered several choices of what to do tonight. Luckily, they went with my favourite, and possibly the best choice, to visit Piazzale Michelangelo in time for the sunset. We made it in time, despite the struggling girls crying about climbing up this hill to it. Hopefully it was worth it.

We stayed until the sun fell below the horizon, taking several pictures of the whole group, my girlfriend and I and even a perfect pose from me with the bronze replica of Michelangelo’s David. I had read earlier, and saw on the map that there was a beach by the river and apparently there was to be a beach party tonight. Nope. The beach was empty and I looked like a fool. Obviously, I explained that it is not even 10pm and Italian’s don’t party until much later. I think I got away with it…

Down from the non-exsistent party, we bumped into another. we went over and sat down in the middle. Then realised that the average age was about 12 and we had accidentally crashed a birthday party. Before anyone noticed us, we quickly made an exit and walked home. When we crossed the bridge, we saw numerous Chinese lanterns in the sky, ones that the kids were lighting when we had joined their party. All of us spent 10mins trying to get the perfect picture of these with Florence in the back. 

Back at the apartment, we enjoyed some glasses of wine and played cards, until we ran out of wine that was. We all left the apartment to find an ‘alcohol retailer’ in town. I thought we had walked past some today, but they had all seemed to be closed now. We finally did fine one and returned back with our find. On the way, I had brought my cigar from home and was smoking it with the 4 girls by my side. One could say I looked a bit like a pimp. I went along with it, exclaiming things like “you like?”, “Special price for you”, in my very best Italian accentuated English. Thankfully none of the locals took me up on this offer (maybe they knew I was joking, or they just didn’t really like the girls. We will never know…).

Back home, we must have had so much excitement on the street that everyone had lost their energy and couldn’t do anything else. Everyone went to bed and I made a route on my map to tour florence tomorrow. My Rome tour went down a treat with my girlfriend so I was prepared to make this one just as good.