Ooh, burn!

Sitting on some rocks in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea reading a book: sounds pretty amazing, right? Well, it was.

Vanessa, Caitie, and I decided to venture out today and conquer something none of us have yet to do. The thought of using the train system in Florence without any sort of tour guide was frightening to me. Even a few setbacks, like almost getting on the wrong train, didn't stop us from achieving what we wanted. This is credited to the people of Italy. Let me explain.

We were able to purchase our tickets for only 9 Euros and validate them without any problems. Then, when the time came to board our train, we naturally went to the train that showcased "Livorno," which was our destination. We even checked the platform number on the corresponding screen. However, when we were boarding, an older Italian man who clearly did not work for the train system, asked to see our tickets. He was not begging for money, or trying to sell us things, and we were in a very public area, so we let him look at our tickets as he insisted. Speaking only Italian, he was conveying that we were on the wrong train and needed to go on the other one, which when he pointed to, had a different city name. We immediately assumed he was wrong but continued to give him the time of day because he was very persistent about us boarding the other train. After 5 minutes of communicating through gestures and picking apart random words that I recognized from the French language, we figured out he was right. He must've known that foreigners commonly make the mistake, and he was nice enough to guide us in the right way. Point 1 for friendly, helpful Italians!

Point 2 comes after we had arrived in Livorno an hour and a half later. We went through the station only to get outside on the wrong side, where there were empty parking lots and only a few people navigating about. Luckily, a younger Italian man saw our confusion. He immediately came over to us with a big smile and knew we could use his help. He knew a lot of English, so this communication was smoother for us. He directed us to go through the station to the complete other side and that we needed to purchased bus tickets for bus number 1 in order to get to the beach. How awesome and helpful once again!

We made it to the beach in time to lay out, read, swim, be silly, and take pictures for a full 2-3 hours. After gaining our "American sunburns" (don't worry Mom, mine isn't too bad :)), we then made our way to a gelato shop to sit down and relax some more. On our way, we came across a dog beach, and watching this hilarious show of dogs swimming in the water, barking at each other, and being playful made me miss my very own 2 yellow labs. There was one specific yellow lab that kept pestering/taunting a small, yappy dog in the water by acting like he was going to steal his ball. The smaller dog kept barking at the yellow lab every time it made the attempt. Caitie and I found this to be extremely hilarious, and Caitie even added her own soundtrack to what the dogs were saying, which made me roar into even more laughter. After a short while, we decided it was time to make our way back to the train station.

What a day it was, indeed, but I have to give the credit of this splendid day to the helpful, friendly Italians who truly made this trip possible. Without them, we would have run into some serious problems- like possibly ending up in the wrong city!

Gratzie, Italy for such a grand time today!

Fino a domani,

Steph