*Pic above is from the train ride. Probably the most beautiful train ride of the trip was from Munich to Florence.*

A lot of times when I drink too much I can’t sleep in late at all, so I was up early and went straight to the shower. Nate showered right after me and we just laid around until the girls woke up, we talked and laughed about all the events that took place between us the past few days and then Nate and I packed up and took off. They had a train at 15:00 to Frankfurt to fly back to their respective homes and end their journey while Nate and I never got around to booking a train to Florence so we decided to leave around 11:00. We said our goodbyes, thanked them for all their tips on Europe and the fun times, I kissed my Aussie love goodbye, both of us knowing we may never see each other again and that was that. My first love of the trip gone! Even though we only spent a few days together I will miss her ability to make me laugh, funny way of saying things, and her lack of understanding our lingo. Her and my friend from college would have been fun to travel with a little longer but they had to get home.

Nate and I got to central station and went straight to the ticket line hoping we wouldn’t have to wait around too long before a train came. Turns out the train straight to Florence was full, but there was a train leaving 7 minutes from right then with no more going towards Florence until tomorrow. We reserved two seats and ran to the train. We both hadn’t eaten yet and it turned out our train was slightly delayed so Nate bought us some sandwiches from a food stand with no line. The sandwhich guy was moving with zero urgency, it almost gave me a heart attack that we were gonna have to stay another night. We made it in the knick of time and braced ourselves for another long day of travel.

Don’t be surprised by traveling problems when you go abroad. If you’re taking the train most of the time and have a eurail pass the train stations can be confusing and unorganized. We just made a crucial mistake by not reserving seats in advance but luckily got it fixed. We had 15 minutes to get off our train and figure out what platform the transfer train was gonna pick us up at. It said our train was going to be at platform three and there would be a 30 minute delay. That thirty minute delay definitely happened, but it just so happened that there are two platform three’s so we flat out missed our train. I asked some people to direct us to the ticket booth and there was another train leaving in 20 minutes so we hurried to the new platform and just got on the train. Always double and triple check you know what you’re doing when traveling in a new city.

Once we got to Florence we had to figure out how to get from the train station to our hostel. Nate took a screenshot of the map, unfortunately there were only three or so street names for us to look for so we struggled to find them. Once we did, we made it to our hostel and got a room. Everyone was already asleep in our room, so we had to be quiet. We locked our backpacks into lockers and went and got a quick bite, came back to the hostel, showered and went to bed. We could explore the city and go out the next day after we caught back up on sleep.

*Pop-up notes: You walk a ton. In the past three days I just described I had already walked 40 miles. 40 miles! I feel like I already lost weight that I don’t even need to lose but I don’t know if I did, lots of beer consumed the past few days to counter the walking, so we’ll see when I hop back on the scale in 5 weeks.