Monday, July 12
It took me a very, very long time to fall asleep last night. Another annoying story: our reservations had us in two different compartments on opposite sides of the car. So we found a guy willing to trade with me. Turns out that he and his friend also got separated . . . into the same different compartments! And changing seats confused the conductor guy, who didn't speak much English. The whole thing was really dumb. Anyway, it was a long ride: about twelve hours. When we got into Florence we changed into our beach clothes, checked our luggage in, and ate breakfast at Mc Donalds. Yum, that was so good. The train to Livorno took about an hour and a half. Once there we were told which bus would take us to the beach.
Their beach turned out to be more of a man-made concrete patio with little swimming areas. The place was really crowded, too, but somehow that made it more fun. We had nothing to do except lay there and rest. Greg swam a little, but not for long because it's not much fun alone. The water was way too cold for me to enjoy it. We got sandwiches at about 1:30, and they were actually pretty good. We were only there for about 2 and a half hours, and lunch time was spent in the shade. Nonetheless, we both have sunburns now. Nothing new for me, but Greg never burns.
We missed the 3:00 train by about one minute! When we got to the station, the sign said that the train was 5 minutes late so we bought some ice cream. As we walked up to the platform, we saw the train leaving. We were really annoyed. So we sat around the station for an hour. Greg tried to write in his journal, but didn't get very far. We both slept through almost the entire ride back to Florence, which was amazing because those were extremely uncomfortable seats. Lugging our suitcases up to the villa was miserable, but we made it by about 6:00. Dinner that night was . . . sandwiches, oh boy!
--Angelique