Rome to Florence to Torino to Lyon in 28hrs!!

So after 3 days in Rome, Dad and I were pretty ready to get out of there (Mom seemed fine). It was hot and packed with tourists- worth it, but still uncomfortable. So we moved on to Florence by Train. Although Florence is also a major tourist spot, it had a very different vibe. It started raining when we got there- which was a very welcome change in weather! We only had that evening there, as our train left the next morning at 8am for Torino, so we tried to see as much as we could. Unfortunately, this meant skipping all museums and thus skipping seeing the statue of David. But by the time we got there, it was see David, or see the rest of Florence. So we walked around, walked on the Ponte Vecchio, saw the Duomo, and made it to Dante's old neighborhood where we saw his church and home.

Closest thing to Iced coffee we found in Rome. Finally found it in the train station when we were leaving. It's more like ice cream, but it was tasty :)

View from the hotel lobby in Florence

Newly renovated bathroom in our room- buyers are gonna like that ;)

View from our hotel room

Ponte Vecchio

Me and dad on the Ponte Vecchio

Street in Florence

Dante's church

Beatrice's tomb

Sunset- I got so many cool pics while the sun was setting over the water

Sunset again, facing away from the sun

People were walking across, on something very low and I thought their silhouettes looked cool.

So we woke up early saturday morning to catch our train to Torino, where we planned- and supposedly had a reservation- to catch a bus to Lyon. When we got there, no one at the train station spoke English, and our little Italian was not working. We finally found the place where the bus was supposed to pick up people going to Lyon- This was not like an Amtrack station, it was even less of a "stop" than a city bus stop bench. It was a sign. Literally a street sign. We quickly figured out that we likely had no reservation (the travel agent told us we did). So it was pretty stressful for about 2 hours. But there was enough space, so we made it on, and could finally relax. The bus ride was about 4.5 hours and went by really quickly, as we went over the Alps and it was a really pretty drive. so we finally made it to Lyon, where we walked around and had dinner. It was so nice to speak the language of the country I was in after almost a week of Italian!

Train station in Torino. That's about all we saw there.

I wanted to stop :)

Castle

The Rhone

Lamb- dinner in Lyon. The veggies were delicious. And that's hard for me to say. I don't think I've ever said that in my life.

Mom and dad at dinner

The Rhone again

City hall

This statue was made for Nice by the same artist who designed the Statue of Liberty. Nice couldn't afford it, so Lyon bought it.