Goodbye Rome hello Forli

 Monday

5 August

Day 36

60 to go

Moving day! The alarm went off at 7am signally the start of the pack up. Paul was up and into it and I followed shortly after. We packed up the last minute things, had breakfast, spoke to dad as they were arriving at Stavanger in Norway and with one last scan, we were on our way. We pushed the bags back to Lepanto underground, boarded the metro and arrived at Rome Termini for 8.30am. This gave us plenty of time to be organised, as the train wasn’t due to leave until 9.55am.

We spent the next hour waiting near the gates and watching for our departure station. We entered the gates at 9.30am, but were left waiting for departure information until 9.55am. Thankfully we were standing right in front of platform 8. We would be leaving 15 minutes late.

We located our car, 2, then joined the crowd boarding. This was a bit stressful, as the luggage lockers were full, so all of our bags had to go overhead. We plonked ourselves in our seats, 3 & 4, and then sat back to enjoy the views of the rolling fields of sunflowers and the fortified towns perched on hill tops.

It took us until 1135am to reach Florence Station. We will be returning here next Monday for a few days. We are looking forward to having some time in this city. After depositing a number of passengers, we were then up and running again by 11.55am. The train moved back over track we had already traversed and now we were facing forwards rather than backwards.

Much of the journey was through tunnels, so there wasn’t much of a view between Florence and Bologna, other than small breaks every now and then.

We arrived at Bologna at 1225pm and hefted the bags back off the train and onto the platform. We found a lift which took us to the concourse and then a manned ticket booth. The attendant was awesome and had us sorted with tickets before long and then directed us to platform 10, back up the escalators.

The train was scheduled to leave at 1.12pm, so we had plenty of time. We stood around waiting in the warm and the cigarette smoke, this past time seems to be a national sport. Cigarettes are very cheap here, so everyone seems to have taken it up.

The train didn’t arrive on time, it was about 5 minutes late. Once it did show,  it was a mad scramble for the correct cart, 5 for us. Paul lifted the bags on, we stowed them above, except the  big one, Paul had space to hang on to it next to him and then waited for the train to arrive at the next station, about 30 minutes away.

We were entertained by the teens on the train and before long we pulled into the station and were met by Francesco. With our bags stuffed into his little hatch back, we made the journey to his home. We were shown to our room, unpacked and then relaxed downstairs, catching up on the family news and enjoying a delicious carbonara.

We put our washing through and then drove into Forli where we were shown the damage from last year’s flood. We then did a short walk around a large park, where there were so many rabbits. Following the walk, we stopped at a supermarket for breakfast supplies and then we returned home for 5.30pm.

With the washing done, we hung it up and then joined Francesco in the kitchen for the next few hours enjoying dinner and looking at old photos. By 9.20pm, it was time for bed.