travelingidahogirl

Arrival (Florence 1)

We took a short trip to Florence over the weekend—my Christmas present from hubby. It is about a three hour drive from Vicenza. We were only staying one night and I wanted to have as much time in the city as possible, so we left around 6:45. The early start was also important because we needed to get to our hotel before 11:00 so that we could drive to the hotel. The very center of Florence is very restricted as far as traffic is concerned—ordinarily, we wouldn’t be allowed to drive down by the duomo (cathedral, in the center of town). Cameras are set up to take pictures of vehicles entering the center and then 70+ euro tickets are mailed to the owners. However, as hotel guests, the hotel will call the appropriate authorities and give their guests’ license plates, so no tickets are sent.

At first, when planning the trip, I figured that we would have to park in one of the outer parking lots and take a bus to the center and walk to the hotel. Parking would have cost around 18 euro. But when I saw a cheap hotel that was only three blocks from the duomo AND it had free parking? Well, come on! How could I top that? They had a room and Marco explained how we could get there, he’d call in our plate number, and parking would be no problem. I was feeling pretty proud of myself.

We borrowed a friend’s GPS, which was great once we arrived in Florence, getting us to our hotel street (although it did repeatedly say: “Warning, destination is in restricted area.”). We had to drive right next to the duomo, but I knew we would be ok. It was close to 10:30 when we arrived. We stopped outside our hotel because the parking place was not evident—it was a small one-way street with barely enough room for parked cars on one side of the road. I ran upstairs to the hotel desk, and Marco gave me a map with the route highlighted to get to the other side of the hotel where a courtyard provided ample room to park. Turning into the courtyard, through a covered archway, might prove difficult, however, and he suggested we pull ahead of the archway and back in through the entrance. Ok, no problem, I think—hubby can do that—I did all the driving up until this point, but driving backwards is not my specialty. (I know you see problems coming—why the hell would I write all this just to describe a successful parking?)

This other street was even tighter—absolutely no room for parking. We got to the entrance and hubby and I switched seats—well, I got out to sort of help him with directions. Hubby thought it best to try to go in frontways rather than backing in, but that meant a twenty-point turn or something completely ridiculous. Did I mention we were driving our small SUV? At about turn 8, after having to wait for multiple pedestrians to squeeze by, and having a small bus waiting on us, hubby decided we’d go around and try it again. Here is where I started getting concerned.

I could see from the map that getting back to this spot was not going to be easy and how was traffic going to be less in the 10 or 15 minutes it took us to get back? But hubby was frustrated (not trying to put this on you, dear) and, like I said, the bus was waiting. So I got in and we drove. We were now on the other side of the duomo and we needed to turn right to try and circle around. We came to a piazza and could only go left or right so I said turn right. Two blocks later, we were in front of the duomo piazza and an Italian polizia was flagging us to stop.

Clearly, not good.

We rolled down the window, and explained what we were trying to do, where we were staying. In his accented English, the polizia was saying “Why did you turn down this street? It is dangerous for you, dangerous for us. I think the red sign is in universal language, no? You should know this, I think. Maybe it cost you lot of money?” I was being as apologetic and humble as possible, and thankfully, hubby was too (I was afraid the sarcastic, condescending—but funny—tone would get under his skin—and it did, but hubby wisely bit his tongue). He said that the hotels would have someone to park our car for us, but suggested that we might park at the train station “because this is like a labyrinth to you, I think.” He got us turned around, and now, of course, the atmosphere in the car reminded me of family vacations driving in Los Angeles, mother reading the map, father demanding better directions. Ah, tradition.

I called Marco and he said to come back to the hotel and he would come down and park the car for us. Beautiful. Of course, by the time we got back to where we’d have to drive beside the duomo, it was packed with market shoppers and we decided we just couldn’t get there anymore. We found our way to the train station and circled a few times before finding a place to park.

We picked up the car the next day—parking for 1 day and 3 hours. Seventy, yes, seven-zero, euro.

Hubby was also not particularly happy about my decision to walk from the station rather than pay for a taxi. Maybe it had something to do with him dragging our two bags (but not big ones!) while I pushed T in the stroller?

So how did we manage to have a good time from then on? Bottle of red wine for lunch. Duh.

posted by travelingidahogirl @ 5:49 PM