Italy

It’s hard not to become enamored with transit systems in Western Europe! We were out of our flat in Flumserberg just before 7:30 this morning because we wanted to play things safe when it came to our train out of Zurich. We waited for less than 5 minutes for the bus for a ~20 minute ride to the train station in Sargans, which was geographically away from Zurich, but all part of Benton’s master plan, which was to catch a train that would take us all the way to Zurich without any changes....

Tim went for a run this morning—a 3.5 mile run down the Arno, across it, and back. He stopped at a cafe on the way back for a coffee and a couple of croissants…and to marvel at the price relative to Switzerland (~$4.50). Once Tim was showered and Benton was up, we headed out for a more substantive breakfast and then to the Boboli Gardens—a pretty large garden planned and initially built by the Medicis in the 1500s, and then opened to the public in the late 1700s....

We got a fairly early start this morning—leaving the flat at 8:30 and getting breakfast en route to Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiorno, the enormous cathedral that dominates the skyline, which we had tried to tour yesterday, but the line was crazy long. It wasn’t super clear, but it looked like the (free) cathedral tour opened at 9:30 AM. Alas! The cathedral opened at 10:15 AM, and we had an 11:00 AM electric bike tour scheduled....

The main item on our list today was to make it to the Jewish quarter and check out the synagogue and Jewish museum of Florence. We ate breakfast in the flat and then took a meandering path to the synagogue and museum—stopping in to check out La SS. Annunziata di Firenze when we stumbled upon it en route—which we toured (donning kippahs as part of the process). We then called an audible to walk over and check out Piazza della Liberta, which houses both Porta San Gallo, which was completed in 1327, and L’Arco di Trionfo dei Lorena, which was completed in 1738....

It was a travel day today, but a short travel day! The speedy trains in Italy meant that it was only about a 30-minute trip by rail from Florence to Bologna. But, just with the various logistics and timing, we arrived at our flat in Bologna just before noon. It is definitely in the running for the nicest AirBnB that we’ve had on this entire trip (and we’ve only had a couple that were stinkers): 2 bedrooms, each with a balcony; 2 full baths, a great living room with a balcony, and high quality furnishings all around!...

Our plan for the day got upended when we realized in the early afternoon that Tim’s booking of a guided walking tour at 3:00…had not actually gotten booked! But, the day worked out okay, anyway. We headed out of the flat a little after 8:30 to grab breakfast. Google failed us again (a consistent theme on this trip), in that the breakfast spot we headed to was…closed. But, there are plenty of cafes around, so we stopped at another one nearby for a couple of pastries and coffee....

Our first planned activity of the day was a 2-hour walking tour. Rather than going through AirBnB Experiences for this (which Tim botched earlier), we had simply reserved a couple of spots on a tour conducted by the local tourism office. The tour wound up being a solid 10 minutes of worthwhile information crammed into two hours. There were 14 people in the group, and only 4 who needed the English version (and the other two besides us were actually a Spanish couple, so they could half-follow the Italian…and there was no Spanish option)....

This was our last day in Bologna, so it shaped up to be a day of meandering around a town that was starting to familiar, while also hitting a few spots that we had not yet hit (as tends to happen after we’ve raised a glass with a local). We started with Basilica di Santo Stefano, which Fosca referred to as “Seven Churches.” The local name fits, as it’s a compact set of small churches and chapels that run into / overlap each other....

‘Twas our last travel day before the Big Travel back to the U.S. today. We grabbed breakfast in Bologna and then returned to our flat to get our bags and head to the train station for a 9:45 AM train to Ancona, which arrived around 11:30. That gave us 8 hours until our 11-hour “ferry cruise” from Ancona to Split. We realized overnight that both of us had no idea what to expect from the ferry....