We got on the wrong train.

Departing a city is like departing a friend, staying in places more than a day or two does allow one to learn more, see more and break through the tourist whirlwind.

In the end, we stayed just five nights in Florence and unlike the past, weren't rushed to see 'the sights'.  For me the Pitti Palace was my favourite, it is a gallery, a residence and also a museum. Pitti Palace isn't crowded as it does not have famous works of art like the Uffizi.

Katie's favourite place in Florence, after long deliberation was Uffizi. She said she was able to absorb more of the gallery this time as there were fewer visitors compared to our previous visit in Summer.

We packed our bags last night and had the final additions after showering and dressing this morning.  I keep saying they are getting full, but this time I almost needed to unzip the expander!

From Florence to Rome on the fast train is normally about 1hr and 20 minutes, we got to the station with about 20 minutes to spare and noticed our train had a delay next to it of 5 minutes.

We also noticed on the departures board there was a previous fast train that had a delay of 90 minutes and had not left yet.

As the departure time came closer so did the delay increase on the board. In the end, our train had a delayed departure of 25 min, but before this, we... got on the wrong train.

Watching the departure board you never know what platform your train will be on until a few minutes before it arrives (and then departs). In our case, our train was listed as platform 11.

 Along with around 100 other people, we all went from the main waiting area to platform 11, having our tickets checked as we moved through. We then walked almost the full length of the train and found our carriage 2A, then lifted our bags on and walked through the carriage to find an Italian businessman in our seats. Katie showed him our ticket where in Italian he advised we were on the wrong train!

We got off the train and then found the electronic signs had been changed and our train was in fact on platform 9, not 11. We briskly walked all the way down the platform (as there is no underground to switch platforms) and across to platform 9 where our tickets were checked again.  These trains are long around 400 meters in length.  We walked along the platform but couldn't find a carriage matching ours (2A) we could only find 2B, we asked the ticket man and he advised our carriage, is further along, we were confused as the next carrage was 1.

Anyway we walked in the direction he pointed and passsed carrage 1 to where we found ours (2A) and boarded.  Apparently threre were two trains joined together our train was 1A, 2A, 3A and the other train connectrd to ours was 1B, 2B, 3B.

Apparently, there were announcements of this train change but they were in Italian.

Who would have thought.

In the end, we arrived in Rome about 36 minutes late and then had to battle Roma Termini, the metro and cobblestone streets with bags in tow by the time we got to the hotel we needed some wine.

It's good to be in Rome

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