Day 10 – Florence to Rome

We had breakfast this morning and then headed to the Firenze Santa Maria Novella Train station and headed to Rome.

We didn’t know our train gate until about 10 minutes before the train took off, but we made it. We hopped on the train and I sat down next to Mick. An Italian man in his 50’s sat down across from me. He violated my personal space for the entire duration of the train ride.

The yellow line above indicates the middle point underneath the table that you do not cross. There is plenty of room for two people to sit comfortably across from each other with their legs not touching.

He immediately sat down and slouched as low as possible and sandwiched my legs in between his. In the pic above, his left leg was touching my right leg. I immediately put outward pressure on the inside of his leg with my right leg to let him know I wasn’t going to do this for an hour and a half, but he just let his leg move with mine, and when I stopped pushing and brought my leg inward, his just moved with mine inward and they continued touching. He didn’t even look at me when I did it, as if two grown men’s legs touching was totally fucking normal. Well it’s not.

This one is a little harder to see so I made the diagram above. The dude falls asleep and fully extends his legs under my seat and his legs are touching both of my legs. I spread a little to get some space and his legs were just limp. When I had to go to the bathroom, I pushed his right leg out into the aisle with my left leg so I could get out. When I got back to my seat his right leg was still extended out into the aisle. I sat down and he moved it back in after a few minutes, and snuggled it up to my leg again. Is this some kind of European thing? Was he into 45 year old guys with gray hair? What the actual fuck was going on here? I still feel violated. 0/5 stars.

We checked into the hotel and I opened the window, and this was our view:

At first I thought it was an aqueduct because I don’t know shit. I looked it up and it was Muro Torto (The Twisted Wall.) Supposedly Nero was buried close to here and its haunted. Evie was near me so I said, “Hey Evie! That is the Muro Torto! Check it out!” And she walks over and goes, “oh, that’s lit” and immediately went back to unpacking.

Then we walked over to the Spanish Steps.

The kids were on their phones too much today so as punishment I made them walk down the steps to take this picture, and then walk back up. I never planned to do anything with this picture. You can’t even see their faces and I didn’t expect to. That wasn’t the point. Neither kid liked the Spanish Steps. I gave it 5/5 stars.

We had dinner on a rooftop restaurant. Some Vatican helicopters were doing patrols above us. Not sure why I made this picture black and white, but the helicopters are blurry anyway, so whatever.

This was the sunset over Rome tonight. The Saharan dust storms are making things a little hazy here. That may sound exotic, but Florida is getting it too so it is not that special.