9:45 am water taxi in the rain this morning, arranged by Mario, our VRBO host. The water taxi is $70 Euro but we were thankful to have a dock close by at a hotel and we didn’t have to walk very far with our luggage and then it docks at the train station. As I boarded I hit my head pretty hard inside the cabin on a bar. From this point on, consider me concussed.

We were met by another pushy porter but we declined and walked our luggage inside. There are very few places to sit at the train station or be able to hide away with luggage so since we had quite a bit of time until our train we decided to buy passes to the lounge for $20 Euro each. It was perfect, quiet, away from all the people, a place to stow our luggage and had drinks, snacks and clean toilettes!

LJ went adventuring and I went out to grab Barry, Brenda and I some breakfast. After finishing it, I saw a sign about not bringing in outside food or drink – oops! It truly was an innocent mistake, but we again broke the rules in Italy.

We had business class seats, so pre-assigned and a pair of four seats facing each other. A very relaxing train trip and off we went on the train to Florence!

Back in Milan, we needed to get the rental car company to pick up our car we would use in Tuscany. The location was several miles away, we initially were going to have L.J. and Barry or myself go pick up the car and come back to collect everyone and the luggage. After considering all the options, we elected to get a taxi that we could (hopefully) all fit into and all go together to pick it up. We made it from the train station to the rental car agency (a little sketchy). The price was $27.70 Euro and we truly made his day with a tip for a total of $40. He did a lot of work fitting everything into the taxi and kept us safe for a decently long ride so we were thankful.

Our rental car was a Ford Focus, but more of a wagon than a sedan. It may not have really been made to hold our amount of luggage and took some creative packing, and maybe Barry and Brenda were squished and we all held items on our laps, but it worked and we were on our way to our next place to lay our heads.

At our VRBO, Villa Cafaggiolo, Paola greeted us upon arrival. Her son manages the property and he lives in Florence with his family. She and her husband live on the property so she met us and showed us around. We were in the Apartment Michelangelo and it was full of charm. The two bedrooms and one of the bathrooms were upstairs. She had left some homemade sauce, pasta and red wine for us to prepare one evening for dinner. The grounds were beautiful with an amazing in-ground pool and… there are ponies! We were asked to please be sure to close the gate when we enter and exit because Wanda and Kenya tend to be roamers. Paola mentioned we might even walk out to them in our courtyard in the mornings but alas, that never happened. There were also two other horses on the property as well. No pictures of them today because we were not successful in finding them. Hopefully tomorrow!

Paola gave us directions to the “Coop” (which she pronounced as Cop) which was the local neighborhood Wal-mart type store in a neighboring town, Pontassieve, so off we went to find dinner and laundry detergent.

First was the adventure of parking, we finally found a spot near the Coop but the parking meter was… challenging to say the least. Barry and Brenda ended up going in as L.J. fought the machine. It was pretty chilly and we were all tired and ready for dinner. Barry acquired detergent and we got back in the car to find dinner. Google maps was definitely our friend most of this trip but unfortunately tonight it didn’t always have correct information. Is anything open? Apparently a lot of places are closed on Monday and Tuesday’s. We tried multiple places by car that were closed, even though the hours on Google maps said they were open. Finally we found Sunset. We had some yummy friend cheese and onion rings, L.J. had pizza and the rest of us had burgers. They were huge burgers but unfortunately a bit charred, from the bun to the hamburger but at least we had found something to eat and we called it a night. Early morning tomorrow as we have a private tour of Florence planned.

Almost half the amount of steps today for L.J. but somehow we still felt just as tired.