The Tunnel of Love
It took us almost 16 hours to get home on Sunday night/Monday morning...this is why no one has heard from us. We are still trying to recover from the almost comic events of Sunday evening.
I am going to blog about Rome in bits and pieces. I'll just mention Florence here because that was our last stop on Sunday. We left Rome early in the morning and arrived in Florence around 10:30 a.m. For some reason, the tour guides decided to leave us in downtown Florence for four hours. Now most of you are probably thinking "Wow, four hours in Florence, what a thrill".
Um, not so much. For starters, there isn't that much to see in Florence. Yes, it was once the home of such amazing people as Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante, Michelangelo. After we saw the church that houses their crypts...well, there's not much to do. Shopping, yes, but after paying so much for this trip, we weren't exactly eager to drop a load of cash buying leather purses--though they were very beautiful. The leather craftsmen of Florence are reknowned for their skill. The other stores available in the area were all places I'd rather be dead than frequent: Burberry, Max Mara, Prada...you know, all the kinds of places two Americans in jeans with their grubby children are welcomed into.
Oh, and take into account that it was about 25 degrees with the wind chill and as I mentioned in the previous post, I thought it would be warmer in Italy, so I packed light coats, no hats, no mittens. So there we were, freezing our butts off for four hours. We ate to get in out of the cold. Then we stopped at a different restaurant for another snack. We wandered the cold streets for awhile, window shopping at Gucci...then we stopped at another restaurant. Finally, we wrapped up our cold (and calorie-laden) visit to Florence with a stop at the aforementioned church.
We were definitely ready to get home. Gen, it was like Tacoma, I swear. We were so tired and cold from wandering the streets of Florence...then we met up at the assigned spot, only to find that the buses were actually about 10 miles away (OK, I exaggerate) and we had to walk to them. Oh no, why would buses come and pick us up at the meeting place? Ugh.
We dragged our stiff and freezing limbs all the way out to the buses, in the suburbs of Florence. Eventually we all thawed out (why, why, why didn't I pack hats???) and settled in for the ride home. We knew that it would take an eternity because it took twelve hours to get from Stuttgart to Pisa. We, being the stoic prairie folk that we are, were willing to bear the long ride.
But 16 hours? How did this happen? Well, I'll tell you: our driver got lost. Not once. TWICE. And you're asking, but how? How does one get lost in a brand new bus with GPS? I don't know and the tour guide didn't bother to tell us. Imagine with me, if you will, this driver taking us off the Autostrada (that's the freeway) for no discernable reason, and getting us lost in a little, tiny Italian town. And then getting us on the only dead-end street in this little town. With little, tiny, narrow streets.
The first time this happened, we all sort of laughed it off. The second time it happened, we were all a little less amused. It took the driver almost 40 minutes to inch forward then inch backward, then forward, then backward, trying to get us out of the narrow little street. Seriously, it was night and the Italian people were all staring out their windows at us. I was so thankful that the bus is from a German touring company...so it wasn't immediately obvious that we were Americans.
Oh, getting stuck...that's not so bad. NO. What's really bad is that sometime around 1:30 a.m. I woke from a punky sleep to the sound of silence and bus tires gliding on pavement and coming to a halt. Yes, that's right, somewhere in a tunnel in Switzerland, we RAN OUT OF GAS. How does this happen, you say? Good question. How does one run out of GAS? The driver had to go to the nearest filling station and come back with gas, fill it up, and then (YAY!!) because the bus was a diesel, he couldn't get it started again...had to have repair people come to fix it. We were in that dang tunnel for TWO HOURS.
You know, we really kind of made the best of it. What was really irritating was that the tour guide didn't keep us informed as to what was happening. She finally came on after an hour of everyone scratching their heads and sheepishly admitted that they had run out of gas. That was the annoying part. No one knew what was going on. Rumors were flying that there was something seriously wrong with the bus and that the tour company would have to call to have another bus sent down to pick us up, or that it would have to be towed and we'd all have to get off, or that we were being abducted by aliens, or that it was all a plot to rob us.
So...we pulled into Stuttgart at 6:30 a.m. What a ride. And for those of you wondering, Josiah slept through it all and Annika slept whenever the bus was moving...they did great. Their parents were getting a little antsy!
But we're home now and I'm going to slowly post a few pictures (we have 255) of the rest of our fantastic trip.
I am going to blog about Rome in bits and pieces. I'll just mention Florence here because that was our last stop on Sunday. We left Rome early in the morning and arrived in Florence around 10:30 a.m. For some reason, the tour guides decided to leave us in downtown Florence for four hours. Now most of you are probably thinking "Wow, four hours in Florence, what a thrill".
Um, not so much. For starters, there isn't that much to see in Florence. Yes, it was once the home of such amazing people as Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante, Michelangelo. After we saw the church that houses their crypts...well, there's not much to do. Shopping, yes, but after paying so much for this trip, we weren't exactly eager to drop a load of cash buying leather purses--though they were very beautiful. The leather craftsmen of Florence are reknowned for their skill. The other stores available in the area were all places I'd rather be dead than frequent: Burberry, Max Mara, Prada...you know, all the kinds of places two Americans in jeans with their grubby children are welcomed into.
Oh, and take into account that it was about 25 degrees with the wind chill and as I mentioned in the previous post, I thought it would be warmer in Italy, so I packed light coats, no hats, no mittens. So there we were, freezing our butts off for four hours. We ate to get in out of the cold. Then we stopped at a different restaurant for another snack. We wandered the cold streets for awhile, window shopping at Gucci...then we stopped at another restaurant. Finally, we wrapped up our cold (and calorie-laden) visit to Florence with a stop at the aforementioned church.
We were definitely ready to get home. Gen, it was like Tacoma, I swear. We were so tired and cold from wandering the streets of Florence...then we met up at the assigned spot, only to find that the buses were actually about 10 miles away (OK, I exaggerate) and we had to walk to them. Oh no, why would buses come and pick us up at the meeting place? Ugh.
We dragged our stiff and freezing limbs all the way out to the buses, in the suburbs of Florence. Eventually we all thawed out (why, why, why didn't I pack hats???) and settled in for the ride home. We knew that it would take an eternity because it took twelve hours to get from Stuttgart to Pisa. We, being the stoic prairie folk that we are, were willing to bear the long ride.
But 16 hours? How did this happen? Well, I'll tell you: our driver got lost. Not once. TWICE. And you're asking, but how? How does one get lost in a brand new bus with GPS? I don't know and the tour guide didn't bother to tell us. Imagine with me, if you will, this driver taking us off the Autostrada (that's the freeway) for no discernable reason, and getting us lost in a little, tiny Italian town. And then getting us on the only dead-end street in this little town. With little, tiny, narrow streets.
The first time this happened, we all sort of laughed it off. The second time it happened, we were all a little less amused. It took the driver almost 40 minutes to inch forward then inch backward, then forward, then backward, trying to get us out of the narrow little street. Seriously, it was night and the Italian people were all staring out their windows at us. I was so thankful that the bus is from a German touring company...so it wasn't immediately obvious that we were Americans.
Oh, getting stuck...that's not so bad. NO. What's really bad is that sometime around 1:30 a.m. I woke from a punky sleep to the sound of silence and bus tires gliding on pavement and coming to a halt. Yes, that's right, somewhere in a tunnel in Switzerland, we RAN OUT OF GAS. How does this happen, you say? Good question. How does one run out of GAS? The driver had to go to the nearest filling station and come back with gas, fill it up, and then (YAY!!) because the bus was a diesel, he couldn't get it started again...had to have repair people come to fix it. We were in that dang tunnel for TWO HOURS.
You know, we really kind of made the best of it. What was really irritating was that the tour guide didn't keep us informed as to what was happening. She finally came on after an hour of everyone scratching their heads and sheepishly admitted that they had run out of gas. That was the annoying part. No one knew what was going on. Rumors were flying that there was something seriously wrong with the bus and that the tour company would have to call to have another bus sent down to pick us up, or that it would have to be towed and we'd all have to get off, or that we were being abducted by aliens, or that it was all a plot to rob us.
So...we pulled into Stuttgart at 6:30 a.m. What a ride. And for those of you wondering, Josiah slept through it all and Annika slept whenever the bus was moving...they did great. Their parents were getting a little antsy!
But we're home now and I'm going to slowly post a few pictures (we have 255) of the rest of our fantastic trip.
Comments
M.
G.
Worse than the Tacoma dome fiasco? I never thought it would happen...and boy am I glad it happened to you and not me. Hehe.
Congratulations on not killing anyone. Would have been a shame to end your Christmas trip in a European jail.