Some more about Italy

Ok, I think I need to do this in parts. This part will get me through at least half of Italy I hope. Next should finish Italy and then the back entries from Germany will begin. This is going to take a while, hope you enjoy the read.

One night in Florence
Ok, picking up where I left off last time, on my way to Florence. I arrived in Florence midday and spent some time looking for the bus station I needed to get to the campground I had booked for the night. After about 30 minutes of wandering and bad directions, I found the Tourist Information place, and they gave me a map (yay!) and good directions to the bus place. So I checked it out, got my ticket so I didn't need to worry about figured that out later, and wrote down the times for the bus line that went out to the camp.
Off to wander the city! Equipped with the tourist map and a few hours to kill, I began by wandering to the one thing I knew I had to see in all of Italy, the Dome. It might not be so high up on everyone elses' lists, but I had started the trip reading a book about it's construction and the engineering used and all kinds of nerdy stuff, with a few fun stories mixed in. Anyway, it had been interesting enought that I have been looking forward to seeing it and being able to walk up it, just as the builders had some 500-600 years ago. It is not hard to find, besides being relatively close to the train station, it is also very big and very tall, so from any distance it can be seen above the buildings. I just looked and took some pictures from the ground for the day, since I had my bag with me still, and it was pretty hot. I took some pictures of other things nearby, like the amazing cathederal that happens to be attached to the Dome, which is known as Doumo or Santa Maria del Foire, or some something like that. Wonderful white, green, and red marble face, with an impressive bell tower right there too. In the same piazza is the bapistry of the church, with the famous "gates of paradise" facing the cathederal. More pictures, more wandering around the city leads me to see other interesting things, without having to try. I had some food (pizza or pasta, I forget now) and made my way back to the bus station, hoping to find people at the hostel/campground to hang out with.

Camping Village Il Poggetto
Well, it did say camping. I got on the bus at around 6 or so, and after an hour or so on the bus we finally got the the campsite. I didn't realize how far out of town it was when booking it, all i knew was that it was pretty cheap to stay at. The scenery driving out was very nice, in the middle of Tuscany and I couldn't complain about the long ride. After checking in and getting the speech about the camp and everything, I threw my bag in the room and went to enjoy the sun for a while. There was some stuff on 2 other beds in the room, so I looked around for other backpacker looking people, but the majority of the people there were families. I had dinner at the restaurant there (pasta with seafood - lots of good seafood like shrimp, squid, mussels, clams, and something else I think) before heading down for bed early. I had planned on going to bed early since I had recieved an email from Enoch early in the day saying he would be in Rome the next day, and other places in Italy for the next week. I decided to skip on to Rome the next morning early in an attempt to meet up with him for a while and just get to Florence on my way back. I ended up meeting the backpackers at this point, a couple from UW-Madison, who were pretty cool and I ended up having a beer with and discussing our travels. Eventually I made it to sleep, but up early enough to catch the 6:30 bus to the city and onto Rome!

Rome!
I made it to Rome at abou 9:30 am or so, and found an internet point (as they are known here) to see if Enoch had gotten back to me yet. No luck there, so I decided to get one of the hop on hop off bus tours of the city, since it is pretty big and spread out a good bit, and with only 2 days here I figured it was the best way to see a lot and get around the city. I stayed on the bus a while, then got off at the Colosseum and took a tour, partly to get some info about it (I remember some from history class, but not much), and partly cuz the tour groups get to skip the line to get in, so I saved an hour or so there. It was pretty cool, fairly massive, and altogether an impressive structure for its time. After that, I decided to do some more tour bussing and caught the next one that went by. I stopped a few historic landmarks later to check the email, and as luck had it, Enoch had emailed me and I had a place to find him at 4pm, which according to the computer clock was 1.5 hours away...unfortunately I realized that too late, as I had spent a little longer on the computer and by the time I got out and checked the time, it was 3:50, and I wasn't that close to the Pantheon. By the time I made it there, Enoch wasn't. Oh well, I took a look at the Pantheon and wandered back in the direction of the tour bus route to get back on there. More wandering and eventually ending up at the train station/metro station to end the day in the city.

Camping Fabulous
Well, despite the slight lack of atmosphere at the campground near Florence, I booked my Rome nights at another campground. Getting to this one involved riding the metro to the second to last stop, then bussing for a while. Not as pretty of a ride as the last one, it wasn't too bad in the end. As far as I could tell, busses in Rome seem to be free as long as enough people are there. Initially I didn't know how to pay for them, so I just followed crowds onto them and had no problems. Later I found out they use the same tickets as the metro, and just didn't worry about it, since no one seemed to care or check. Also, I don't know where to buy them coming back into the city since there are no machines at the bus stops or on the bus themselves. Anyway, I got to the campgrounds at some point, all I remember was that it was rush hour and the motorway was all backed up heading out there. Did the check in thing, got the speech, gave away documents that I usually wouldn't just give to strangers, etc. I got to my room, and was surprised how nice it was. A cabin with three beds, AC, a fridge, own bathroom, etc. I wasn' t sure if could expect other campers or not, but no one else ever showed up, so I had the room to myself. I settled in and headed over to the restaurant to get some food, exhausted from being up so long and doing all the traveling all day. I had an engineering urge and started drawing out concepts for a better wrench on the placemat, until that was interupted by food showing up.
Dinner was good, some pizza with wine. Rest of the night was uneventful and involved me relaxing in my room and playing with the AC.

Rome again!
The next day I headed back into town after sleeping in, and upon checking the email, realized Enoch would be doing Vatican City and some art gallery decided that would be a good plan for me as well. Well, thanks to the sleeping in, I managed to miss the entrance hours to the Vatican by 30 minutes, and since the next day it was closed and I was leaving town, I had missed it totally. Oops. Well, St. Peters Square was nice, and part of the city I think, so I didn't miss all of it. Anyway, I continued on to find the gallery, and on my way got to enjoy walking through some gardens and saw some other stuff, nothing really special, just normal stuff that happens to be old and important for some reason. Eventually I made it to the Gallery, only to find out it had a 10€ entrance fee and I didn't even know what was inside, so I chilled in the gardens some more before finding my way back into the city. Wandering by a few more famous things and heading back to camp finished off the day. Dinner at camp was good again, this time I decided to try the seafood and pasta, given the good results at the other campsite. Similar meal, also very good! I wish you could get this back home. More engineeringness on the placemat, I think the wine makes me think that way. Maybe I can convince my boss to import Italian wine as a business expense? Rest of the night had more relaxing and nothing too interesting. Oh, at some point I bought a pair of plaid shorts in the city, simply because it was so hot out I was only wearing shorts and only had one pair of non-athletic shorts. Pictures will be added eventually.
My next day involved checking out and spending half the day wandering to see what was left on my mental "I want to see this" list of Rome, and then training it back to Florence.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I got my hair cut in Rome. There was a slight language barrier, but in the end, this is what happened:

This is where this entry ends, and right before the next one will pick up. Check the photos link for a few more pictures, although I'm not caught up with them, they take so long to put up it goes slowly.