Flashback: from ATL to FCO to Firenze SMN and how to find your hotel when Google Maps throws in the towel…..or not

Well the Saturday hike got called on account of weather in the for of Orange flag warnings for thunderstorms and heavy rain. Now as most of you know, hiking in the rain, while not my favorite thing to do, is also not something I typically shy away from when through hiking. I made the call for three reasons 1. This year I’m hiking alone and the trail I was going to hike is not heavily used. 2. The path periodically runs besides the Arno river so I don’t know if it is prone to flooding and 3. while rain is tolerable lightning is not. I only wish the hotel had a bar so I could sip on a drink while writing this and watching the rain lol.

The trip from ATL was uneventful, unlike last year’s roller coaster turbulence, and we arrived at DaVinci 20 minutes early and thus were shunted to a remote gate and off loaded onto buses. If anyone ever changed planes in Cincinnati in the 90’s think the bus ride from the COMAIR terminal to the main terminal and you are there.

I always allocate 2.5 hrs to clear customs and retrieve luggage and Rome has, to this point, always exceeded my expectations (Atlanta unfortunately doesn’t) in that last year and this from offloading to having bags in hand walking to the “Leonardo Express “ (Trenitalia’s name for it not mine) has been less than an hour. Bravo FCO!

That’s the good news, the bad news is that I had to wait three hours at Rome Termini for the train to Florence and there is literally no place to sit in the waiting area at Roma Termini and while I did sleep on the plane I was still jet lagged and the planar fasciitis in my left foot started to remind me that it was not happy. It was a lonnng three hours.

I did not take any pictures from the train on the way to Florence because 1. I was asleep most of the time and 2. I never seem to get the shots I want, I’m either too slow, there’s a reflection off the window or something else, I’m always disappointed. So, think train pictures from last year in Calabria only greener 😃

So I get to Florence my foot hurts and I’m jet lagged. No problem according to the hotel I’m only five minutes away through the underground mall. Cool, I take the mall come up the stairs into a Piazza with about five streets connecting and it starts to rain. Not a problem, pull my hat out of my back pack and all is good….until it starts raining harder. A minor grumble but I’ll just pull my trusty phone out with Google Maps and I’ll be good. Oh hell no! No data no signal and I’m in the middle of Florence!

So, pro tip, I dialed 611 which is the AT&T hotline that jumps on any cell signal available to connect with ATT. It also registers your phone on the local ATT affiliated database which allows you voice and data access. Voila! Map populates and the hotel was 500’ away up on of the myriad side streets. Finally, checked in I checked out until the evening’s activity a Wine and Cheese walk.

More on that tomorrow and I promise there will be more pictures than stories 😊

Until then Ciao from Florence!

Luigi