September 14, 2023
Day 8: Rest day in Firenze
Just hop on the bus, Gus, you don't need to discuss much
I'm going to take Paul Simon's advice and not say a whole lot about our off-day. It involved a lot of bus riding and walking and generally very touristy stuff. I think that visitors outnumber locals in most of the town of Firenze, and while the sound of the English language thrumming all around us was somewhat comforting, it was also kind of boring. But don't get me wrong. It's a very pretty city with a lot more to offer than we were able to manage in a short day. We wanted to make reservations for the Uffizi or Accademia galleries, but we didn't know exactly what day we'd arrive, and we are in fact running one day behind our "schedule" -- whatever that means.
I did book train tickets for Bologna today. Did I mention that we're skipping the mountain stage of the tour? I really wanted to go everywhere under pedal power, but the research I've done tells of 20% grades in spots. No way I'm going to manage that with the camping gear in tow. There's still the matter of getting to the train station from our campground up here in the hills. The bus rides helped us to scout it out. There is indeed one big climb, but it's doable. It's mostly the traffic on the climb that'll make it daunting. That, plus the challenge of city riding afterwards. Stay tuned!
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