As I mentioned in previous blog's, my friend Amy from D.C. is visiting me this week. She arrived on my doorstep at 9 a.m. Saturday morning, bright-eyed despite the overnight flight, ready to take in the sites - a trooper if I ever saw one!
We had about four hours until we had to leave for our journey to Florence, Italy. So we set off on a quick tour of some of the my favorite areas: Bastille, the Marais, and Ile de la Cité, stopping for a quick brunch near Place des Vosges. After hurrying back to my apartment to throw together our bags for Florence, we began the Ryan Air adventure. As I learned after my first trip to Italy, the Ryan Air adventure begins with a metro ride to Port Maillot (20 min), then a bus ride to Paris-Beauvais Airport (1:15-1:30), followed by the plane ride, then inevitably by another bus/train from the receiving airport to city center. In our case, we had flown into Pisa airport and needed to take a train (1:30) to Florence. Thankfully, during my Genoa trip, Barret recommended a nice, not too expensive hotel literally one block from the Florence train station.
We left Paris around 2 pm, and settled into our Florence hotel around 10 pm. After the Italian instructions - with a few English words sprinkled in - from our concierge, we headed off to find dinner. It took about three tries, but finally we were able to find a restaurant still serving dinner. A glass of Italian wine, bread and olive oil, and fettucini with black truffle cream, and I was back in Italy. I may be having a whirlwind romance with Paris right now, but Italy is my true lover. The Italian love of food and life easily outweighs the Parisien ''joie de vivre'' which is rankled with the stresses of the Parisien weather, attitude and expensive lifestyle.
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