Monday: Tavarnelle to Rome, Italy

We woke up around 9am, gathered all our things up and quickly checked out. The buses out of Tavarnelle only leave in the morning and the afternoon and since the previous night I felt like I was still on a waterbus in Venice I made one of my famous executive decisions to leave in the afternoon. The first bus out of there after 9:30am to Sienna was at 3:35pm. No problem, so we dragged our luggage into the small town and bought avocados (a house favorite), a lemon, strawberries, grapes, tomatos and lettuce for lunch. Around 11am we had seen enough of the town, but had another four and a half hours to go so we sat in the park, people watched, played with our electrical gadgets, drank (delicious Italian) coffee and took a few catnaps. By 1pm we decided to get lunch at a local restaurant called il Caratell. After lunch we headed back to the hostel to wait for the bus because they had wi-fi. We wasted a few more hours then around 3:10 ventured out to the bus stop. By the time 3:50 rolled around we were concerned and two like-minded Italian girls shared their worry, this was the third time today they had tried to catch a bus to Sienna, without luck. Kaitlin insisted we wait until 4:35 for the bus and when it did not arrive our new game plan was to take a bus back to Florence. We returned to the Tabacchi store, exchanged our tickets (and even received change), I got a quick snack and we went to wait for the 5:20 Florence bus at another stop. When 5:40 arrived without a bus Kaitlin began praying and the bus arrived. We were thankful, it had been a long day of waiting and we were ready to get to Rome.

The bus driver drove like a bat out of Hell, taking no prisoners down the winding hills, all we could do was hold onto our luggage and our lunches and hope that Kaitlin kept praying. After a long and nauseating bus ride we arrived at the train station, caught the next train to Rome and enjoyed the smooth, easy train ride.

Since, the Venice fiasco (which somehow never really became a fiasco), Kaitlin has taken great care in noting very specific directions to our destinations. We followed her very accurate and surprisingly clear instructions to 42 Via Palestro. However, the address of our hostel was 23 Via Carlo Cattaneo. Finally after several confusing minutes circling 42… like vultures, a waiter, whose eye had caught Kaitlin, offered to help and he led us in the complete opposite direction directly to our hostel. We don’t know what happened there and honestly at this point it does not matter. We made it to the hostel.

We checked in, hung our clothes out from the previous night to finish drying and hit the shower. I got out first and I went back to the room, but was surprised to see people in our beds, according to the other hostellers, all the beds were full. I went down to the office to straighten out the newest miscommunication, turns out two of the girls were supposed to switch rooms, so after a little rearranging we were back in business.

Next on the agenda was dinner, by this point we know we need food in order to work as a cohesive unit. We went for Arabic fast food and were happy for the change of pace and flavors. It seems all the boys in Rome love Kaitlin, when we were served our food we were informed, “sweet food for a sweet lady” as he looked into Kaitlin’s eyes. After dinner we wanted something else sweet, so Kaitlin got some ice cream, the server didn’t even let her choose, apparently he knew what was best and I made out with tiramisu and a glass bowl to boot… he insisted I could take it when we noted we wanted our dessert to go.  

Finally back at the hostel we decided to log onto the wifi. We had been having difficulty in the room and the others were already asleep so we went down to the common area around 11:55. As we were walking in we were informed that the room closed at midnight, our puppy dog eyes earned us 20 minutes and we quickly checked emails and posted on the blog before heading up to bed for a long and restful sleep… at least we that’s what we were hoping for…

A few notes I forgot:
We Vlogged twice while waiting for the bus, both times the speakers were on mute.
At the hostel none of our 3 different style locks would fit the locker so we bought 2 of the 5E locks from the vending machine and that did not fit either. Note: 5E=~$10 for a very cheap lock that didn't work.
I also added photos to hopefully bring up the day. :)