Florence - Day 12

It was another easy day - starting with my regular caffe latte at the market, to fortify myself for the shopping ahead. When I came back home I had a good long skype with Paalo working out what we're going to do when he returns. There was good and bad news. The bad was that Paalo will have to overnight in Milan as there are no trains that late that come into Florence, this would mean that the next day I'd have to gather all our stuff and meet him in Milan. The good news is that we discovered he arrives a day earlier than we thought which means I won't have to do that and that Paalo will spend one night in Florence before we leave for other places.

Now all I have to do is find out if I can leave a bag here in the apartment since we are coming back and we don't really want to carry all our bags to the places we're going. In case I can't do this, this afternoon I headed off to Mailboxes Etc as I have read that they have a left luggage service. The train station is out of the question as they will only hold bags for a maximum of 5 days only and that isn't enough.

I had a fair idea where I was going but the building works occurring around the Chiesa di Santa Maria Novella really threw me.



Two years ago there was a piazza behind the fence and you could see the beautiful facade of the church.

The non-existent street signs certainly weren't helping and then I remembered I have GPS on my phone. Paalo very cleverly downloaded all the maps for Italy so even though it does chew through the batteries it doesn't cost anything to use. Thank God for the GPS as I was going the wrong way!

Before too long I was going the right way and soon at my destination...how typical though when I looked at the door



I keep forgetting about the siesta time.

I wasn't going to hang around for an hour so I winded my way through the streets and back home.

It will be a quicker journey next time.