Strike!

I hope my Dad doesn't get too excited reading this headline. It's not your kind of strike, Dad.

We woke up early because E had errands to run. He had to get his glasses repaired, and he had to take T to buy a Barbapapa ball from a gumball machine. T had been coveting it for a couple of days, he was a very good boy and we told him we'd get it for him. Then when we went to get it, the machine had already been wheeled inside and locked up for the night. He was so sad. Luckily it was back out in the morning.

What will L miss most about Italy?

Then we had to hurry to catch the funicular down to the train station to catch the 10:15 train. There wouldn't be another train for hours. But the funicular station was closed. No funicular, no bus until 12:30, and no explanation. We asked if it was possible to walk down to the station but were told there were too many stairs on the trail. E decided to go anyway, which was good since although it was very very steep there were no stairs at all. Halfway down we were met by a very agitated man coming up the hill. He was waving his arms and yelling like he was warning us. He didn't speak any English, but I understood enough to get that he was telling us it was impossible to go and we should turn around. I thought he meant the trail wasn't passable. E decided to go on rather than push the stroller back up, which was good since the road got better and better. We even made it to the station and got our ticket with one minute to spare. We wouldn't have caught a Swiss train, but the Italian train was a few minutes late. It was a wicked old train. It had smoking compartments. I wouldn't be surprised if Trenitalia got it on sale when East Germany went out of business. I wish I had taken a picture.

The easy section of the walk to the station.

We didn't know what the excited man was upset about until we got to Florence. It was a big railroad strike. Some of the trains were running, but no one was working at the station except for a few people there to tell us no one was working. That was a problem because we didn't have tickets to anywhere - I had decided to play it by ear for once to give us some flexibility. We could buy our tickets from a machine, but that was very hard, since we wanted to go into Switzerland but we only wanted to buy a ticket as far as the border because of our Swiss train pass. The problem was the machine would not show any of the connections at the border. We spent way too much time trying to find some wifi, then finally used our phones to figure things out and bought the tickets.

So that ate up some of our time in Florence, but I was able to see what I was most interested in (given that we had no reservations for the museum and David) which was the duomo. I am all duomoed out now, but Florence really was pretty amazing - from the outside. Every single bit of it was decorated and it was huge. Looking at it from the front, it looks like a city sized duomo with a bonus tower. From the side, though, it seems to go on forever. It really was a sight. Inside though was surprisingly small and very plain except for the dome and some very cool optical illusion type marblework on the floor.

It's smaller on the inside. (Dr Who!)

The cool floors.

 Oh, here was something interesting about the plain inside. The dome was painted with some trompe l'oeil. The innermost ring of the dome painting is painted to look like it is actually a vertical section. It isn't stepped up at all. The dome is all round.

After that we went to check out the Piazza della Signoria with the town hall and the copy of David outside. We had some gelato and S accidentally became part of a mime show. She was walking with her cone though the edge of his performance area and he started to follow her and act like he wanted her ice cream. Without missing a step she switched hands and held her arm out straight away from him. That and her expression got her a pretty good laugh.

Here is something else interesting. After all the crazy old trains we rode in Italy and with the troubles of the strike - we were on a plush Eurostar train from Florence to Milan on our way to Lugano! In terms of second class train travel in Europe, that is the absolute top. We've only ridden one before, a few years ago, through the chunnel. Then it was like riding an airplane with it's own separate platform, tickets checked and security (maybe because of the chunnel.) Here, it just arrived like a beautiful Mercedes surrounded by Chevettes.

Chaos at the station.

We had considered going all the way home, but for various reasons could only make it as far as Lugano. But we were glad to be back in Switzerland considering the train troubles. We got off the train and walked about twenty feet to a funicular. We got off the funicular and walked twenty feet to our hotel. Then we went up to our rooms, ate oranges, watched Japanese cartoons, and went to bed.