Due to an airline schedule change (thanks, Delta!), I can no longer fly with my group out of JFK. Instead, I fly to Detroit, from there to Paris, and from there to Pisa. It means 24+ hours of flying, but at least it breaks up the flights a little. The Detroit airport is very nice, and I spend my layover walking the terminal, thinking it will be the last chance I'll have for awhile to move around.
Layover in Paris: Charles De Gaulle airport (CDG) stinks. There, I've said it. Ugly building, confusing signage. I leave Terminal 1 to find a shuttle bus to Terminal 4. There are two other Americans waiting at the bus stop, too, but they aren't real chatty. They're telling me that they are on their way to Orvieto, Spain, when a woman comes up and starts asking us questions in French. "Sorry" is all I can say. One of the American guys says, "Well, all I heard was autobus" and then looking at me, says, "Well, at least you look like you might be French!" The people at Lands End (where I bought my blouse) would be so proud!
Terminal 4 is clearly not the high-end terminal. There's one bathroom, one duty-free shop, one bookstore, and one snack bar. I glug down a Diet Coke (or Coca-Cola Light, as they call it in Europe) and settle in for the three hour wait. You can't drift off here, because as the automated PA voice helpfully points out, they don't announce flights in order to minimize the noise. So you have to keep checking the departures board to find out when your flight is boarding.
Hurray, just 24 hours since I left home, and I've landed in Pisa. Now to buy a train ticket, find the train station, and get on the train for Florence. I confidently try out my elementary Italian on the ticket clerk. "Uno biglietto a Firenze Santa Maria Novella, per favore". He is impassively unimpressed, but I get my ticket. Now where the heck is the train station? I follow the signs, but they mysteriously taper off. Aha, there it is, two little tracks with a decrepit old train covered in graffiti. The TV monitor says that the train for Florence is leaving from track 5. Track 5? But there are only two tracks. Desperately, I approach the family sitting on one of the benches.
"Dov'e binario cinque, per favore?"
They shrug, and the father answers back in Italian.
"Non capisco...Inglese?"
Nope, sorry, nobody speaks English.
Some old man on a bicycle yells something at me in Italian, none of which I understand. "Grazie" I yell back. Then it dawns on me that the TV monitor is showing the times from the CENTRAL train station, not the airport. Which is probably what the old man was telling me. And I now have missed the last train from the AIRPORT station to the CENTRAL station. Grrr, but at least I know what's going on now.
I go over to the taxi stand and tell the driver to go to Pisa Centrale Stazione. I dash from the taxi to the platforms and find that I'm still on time to catch the train to Florence...I'm feeling very proud of myself right about now.
An hour later, and I'm in Florence, at the Santa Maria Novella train station. I've already scoped out the street layouts on Google Maps, so I know that my hotel, the Grand Hotel Baglioni, is just on the other side of the piazza. I've made it!
In the lobby of the hotel, I meet one of our guides, Alessia, and the two other ladies in the group, Florence, a dentist, and Ann, a computer consultant. Both of them are friends, live on Staten Island, and are of Sicilian descent. After dropping off my luggage, we go upstairs to dinner.
The dining room is beautiful, with a panoramic view of the Florence skyline and the Duomo all lit up. We have a fixed menu dinner, and the waiter pours an incredibly wonderful glass of Chianti. After the first pasta course, our main course turns out to be veal scallopine. Now, ordinarily, I don't eat veal--the idea of it just bothers me. But, I figure that this poor little calf is already dead, and besides, I'm hungry. And my goodness, was it delicious.
After dinner, we decide to take a quick walk to the Duomo. The streets are full of people walking around, and I feel perfectly safe. Most of the stores are closed, but the cafes are going strong, and the piazza is crowded with people.
My hotel room is charming, with wood floors and a beamed ceiling. I don't have a view (just an air shaft), but the window itself is a marvel to behold--an inner wooden shutter, then a glass casement window, then an exterior slatted shutter. The bathroom is tiny, but spotless. I flip through the TV channels, but my options are limited--CNN Europe or BBC World. There are a couple of music channels, but honestly, Italian hip-hop all ends up sounding like Falco. Over the course of the week, I will also watch Scooby-Doo and an episode of Eight is Enough (la famiglia Bradford) dubbed in Italian. I will understand perfectly the plot of both shows despite the lack of English dialogue. Scooby-Doo does an excellent job of matching the Italian voices very closely to the original American ones.
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