Florence to Siena to Rome

There's a jubilant and boisterous feel to the culture and people of Italy. I'm seeing it in every Italian city we visit. It makes it a little easier to travel with kids. I read an article recently that said "we've lost the village that used to help raise the kids". I think the village is alive and well in Italy. 

Upon arrival in Siena, we chose to walk the 30 minutes from the train to the city centre. Since I've learned the hard way to out in exact addresses, we knew exactly where we were going. It's hard with a stroller, so we casually stopped after 30 minutes for a meal (we still had at least 20 more minutes to walk, google maps estimates are about half what they should be for families of 4 :) ) Of course we ate pizza and spaghetti. 

We finished the meal and made it over to the duomo. Oh, first we stopped at a hotel to see if they'd be willing to hold our bags. I offered money, but they were so kind to keep it for free, and later they even called a taxi for us (which came in less than 5 minutes!) Stay at Hotel Duomo next time you're in Siena for me. 

Then the frustration kicked in. I had pre-ordered tickets to the duomo online. The online transaction went perfectly, except I only received confirmation on the screen, I didn't receive an email. It made me a little nervous, but I came with the onscreen confirmation printed in hand. Well, I talked to 4 different people at 4 different places at the Duomo and none of them were willing to let us in . I couldn't bring myself to paying again, so we frantically tried to check our credit cards through our phone to see if we had paid. It seems as though the transaction never really went through, but we definitely didn't go through the church. After a glass of wine, tiramisu, and a few deep breaths, all is well again :)

We walked into the city centre and straight up into the main tower. My youngest daughter calls every old building a "castle", which is very cute and she loves castles. Then we grabbed some gelato and sat right in the middle of the piazza with about 1000 new friends. Awesome.

Then it was time to get to Rome. We got very lucky to jump on an early train right as it was leaving. It's a little unfortunate that you have to go back north to Florence (for over an hour), to then take a train to Rome from there. I guess it works out though because the really high speed train from Florence goes straight to Rome without stops in just over an hour.

Well, we got on that high speed train and pretty much knew immediately that something was wrong. We had "open tickets" and everyone else had numbered tickets. The conductor came around and taught us that we were supposed to take a slow train from Florence, but she let us pay the difference in price and stay on. Little embarrassing, but I guess it's fine.

So we arrive in Rome and I had booked a hotel right next to a train station. Well, technically it was right next to a "light rail" station, which is different. That difference was important because the light rail was broken due to heavy rainstorms. 

There were many other options to get to our hotel, but we opted for the quick and expensive taxi. We paid €50 and upon arrival the hotel said it should have been €20-30, so we were taken a little but it was a long day and I was actually fine with it, we paid for ease I guess. 

We're in Rome and ready to have a great time!