Florence to San Marino

​9/26/17 Tuesday
We woke up around 7:45 and showered. We had breakfast at the farm again. Again, it was delicious. We packed up all our stuff, and took up Eugenio on his offer to call a taxi for us. It was to arrive in about 15 minutes, so we waited in the chairs on the patio area, baking in the hot morning sun for a bit. When the taxi rolled up, we tossed our bags into the VW minivan and climbed in. We asked the driver to get us to the 23 bus, so he dropped us off at the nearest stop. It was a multi-route stop, fortunately, because we surmised that the 23 was not running that day, after 2 of the scheduled departure times listed came and went with no sign of a 23 bus. So we did a matching game, and saw that the 8 bus hits two stops with similar words as stops on the 23 route. So we hopped on the next 8 bus, and hoped for the best. When we saw a familiar intersection, we hopped off. This was at Sorgane, where we had gotten off a 23 bus the day before. We waited just a few minutes and a 23 bus arrived, continued to the end of the line, and turned around to head back towards the center of Florence. Perfect.

Delicious breakfast spread at Villa Dauphine.

So happy to finally be on any bus, even if it was the wrong one.

​We rode until we felt like we were pretty close to the train station, with the intent to find some lunch before heading to the station. We skipped by a few places, struck out at one (no credito!), and finally decided to order sandwiches to go at a little shop. We got a chocolate croissant also, because why not? The total came in under the minimum for credit, so we got a beer as well. We took our stuff and started walking again, aware of our looming deadline for our train. It was not yet an emergency, but we weren’t totally clear on which way we should be heading. We tried to orient ourselves relative to the Duomo, and the maps on Mandy’s phone (which weren’t loading street names), but couldn’t be certain. We walked a block or two, checked the map, walked again, confused, and repeated this process until we felt like we were legitimately lost. Finally, we came to a large plaza, which Mandy smartly identified as Santa Maria Novella. This allowed us to get a handle on our location on the map, and to walk in a straight line towards the train station instead of wandering hopefully.
We got into the train station with plenty of time. In fact, our train’s platform wasn’t even listed yet. So we relaxed for a few. A woman approached and asked for a Euro, but we had none, so we apologized. She wandered towards a man with the worst bowl cut ever, who appeared somewhat suspect, but I don’t know why, exactly. Perhaps five minutes later, she approached again, and asked for a Euro. Again, we declined. The bow cut man stood awkwardly close to us, staring at a wall intently. We watched the woman continue through the crowd asking for money, even after she had collected from others. Thoroughly uncomfortable, we left the area until our platform was listed. We were to leave from 17, which is far away from the main platform area. So we walked way down the station, and got seats on the train, and waited.
The train rolled out of the station at Firenze S.M.N. and we headed to Faenza. At Faenza, we moved over one rail and waited about a half hour for our next train to arrive. The train arrived, we hopped on, and waited again. The conductor had to take a smoke break, which is fine, but would become a factor for the rest of our day. The train rolled out about 10 minutes behind schedule. A few stops later, two men moved through our car to the rear of the train, where there is a bicycle storage car. A minute or two later, two police officers moved through in the same direction. We could see them checking IDs and taking notes. At the next stop, the officers removed the men from the train, then sat beside us for the remainder of the ride. Not sure what that was all about. The rest of the ride to Rimini was uneventful.

A random passing town in Italy. No idea.

Another one.

​Once in Rimini, we had to find a bus. Unfortunately, one had just left. We missed it because we were late. So we had about an hour to kill until the next one. We knew we were near the east coast of Italy, so we figured we’d go to the ocean. We walked about 20 minutes until we found the beach. We snapped a couple pictures and then hightailed it back to the bus station to catch our bus. We didn’t want to be late, because it was about an hour and a half until the next one! We arrived with plenty of time to spare, and began to get slightly anxious that we were at the right stop when the scheduled departure time came and went. A few minutes later, however, our bus arrived and we hopped on. We scrambled to connect to WiFi on the bus, in order to figure out which stop we should get off at. When we couldn’t connect, we decided to just make an educated guess. All of the bus stop signs we were stopping at looked identical, so Mandy asked the driver to notify us when we were at Borgo Portici. We hopped off when he called it out.

Welcome to Rimini. Here's a car covered with cans..?

Rimini Beach!

Rimini horse fountain.

​Now what? We had been instructed by our host to catch an ATI bus, which we think is approximately a city bus for San Marino. Well, since we had been running behind schedule since the train conductor’s butt break, we missed the last ATI bus. We tried asking in a few shops for a taxi number, an to see if they could make the call for us. After striking out there, and unable to access WiFi, we gave up and Mandy activated her cell phone for another 24 hour period (which costs $10USD each time) so we could message our host and see what options we had. While we awaited her response, we tried to get some cash for a taxi from an ATM, which was apparently malfunctioning. We were so ecstatic when Valentina responded to say that it was no problem for her to come pick us up at the bus station. What a relief! She arrived about 5 minutes later; just in time as an old man was approaching us, yelling in a foreign language at apparently nothing. We tossed our bag in and thanked our awesome host a hundred times. We chatted along the ride to her house, and she showed us around.
We promptly dropped our bags and kicked our shoes off. After a quick shower, we asked where we should look for dinner, hoping against hope to actually get to eat, because it was past 8pm. She jumped up and grabbed her keys, and drove us up the hill to the old fortress to drop us off. She said that we’d find plenty of places still open, and just message her when we’re ready to come home. We wandered around the eerily silent streets a while, past door after door, all closed. Eventually, we came across a street that had several open restaurants. Score! We picked La Osteria, and were promptly seated inside. I ordered an Illecita by Birrificio Abusivo, a local brewery. It was pretty tasty! I ordered a rose wine that I liked. I ordered a plate of hand-rolled pasta in a pesto sauce, and a dish of thin-sliced beef with salt and rosemary seasoning. All of it was delicious. I ate handmade ravioli with bacon and tomato. It was really good! After dinner, we figured we’d relied on Valentina enough already, and that we could walk home on our own. The weather was pretty good, and the town was quiet. We set out in the direction we had come by car, as best we could from memory. When we were pretty sure we hadn’t been here before, we used Mandy’s phone to navigate us home. We arrived about 40 minutes later, quite sick of walking. We got into bed after a quick chat with Valentina, and passed out not long after.