After waking up early we said our tired goodbyes to Eduardo, Jerry, Andy, Henrick and Massimo. Kris and Stacy were still sound asleep. Our taxi driver was extremely cheery and happy to have American tourists. He kept mentioning famous Italians from the area and asking if we had heard of them. One singer in particular he was insistent that we had to know him and played his CD fast forwarding through tracks sure that we would recognize it. At the train station we caught a train to Bologna and then to Florence. It is interesting that different languages give different names to cities. It Italian it is called Frienze which makes ordering tickets confusing. I feel like the native country name should be it for naming a city. We have found that the trains are not as reliable as in Germany. The departure time is an approximate time however the train might not arrive at all. After several hours in a high-speed train (which Steven was pretty excited about) we hopped a taxi to our hotel, a converted convent. The hotel was interesting. It is extremely quiet and the décor is what one would expect from a converted convent. We dropped our bags, got some lunch and headed back to the hotel. I instantly fell asleep for the most glorious air-conditioned nap. When I awoke I noticed a look of despair on Steven’s face. The post-adventure depression had hit him. While I was sleeping he was pouting that his dream cycling vacation had ended. We left the hotel room and did the only thing I could think of to pull Steven from his slump: we found a gelato shop. We walked around the city sightseeing, and were amazed (and appalled) at the amount of tourists. After having spent a week in quiet villages and country roads, Florence was a shock to our system as we navigated packed sidewalks and swarms of people. The entire center of Florence is overwhelmed with tourists, and none of the Italian charm we had come to expect was present. Instead, we ran into more people speaking English than Italian, and hordes of people hocking cheap toys and souvenirs. Even the food was different. Everywhere we turned we found “stereotypical” Italian food with high prices and poor quality.  And it was hot, oh so hot. We had thought it was hot in the countryside, but in the stone center of Florence it was even worse. Thankfully we had Rick Steves to guide us, and we eventually found a nice little restaurant slightly away from the main tourist attractions. I got my big chunk of lasagna I’d been craving all week (which I split with Steven), and then we headed back out to wander around a little more. We found that it was much more pleasant to sightsee in the evening, when it was cooler, so we walked around until dark and then retreated back to our first nights sleep in a truly air-conditioned room.