World Adventure

30Oct12 Florence
Decided to spend the day looking around the free state museums then head off to Rufina for a festival starting at 1600.
We walked into the old city only to be met by a sea of blue t-shirt clad people. It was a breast cancel fun run around the sites. We headed over the river to get away from the crowd and headed to the Pitti palace which is a museum now. It is a magnificent art gallery with plenty of old Masters and took hours to view. The internal decoration of the palace is equally remarkable. Even better when free. I particularly enjoyed the Botticelli paintings.
We got to the train station and hopped on the small train heading for Rufina where they was to have been another blessing of the harvest and the associated celebrations.. We only knew that the station was somewhere along the line so kept our eye on the names at each station only to find that one station had no name or signs at all. We kept on going but our station did not turn up and the 35 minute journey suddenly become a lot longer. We lost our nerve and got out at Vicchio station and noticed that there was a train leaving for Florence in a couple of minutes on the same platform. We presumed it was the same train as we had just departed as it was still sitting at the station. We purchased our return ticket and the train headed off in the wrong direction! Doh! I had taken an image of the train line map so knew that we would reach a large station in a couple of stops and we arrived at San  Lorenzo Borgo  as expected. Then tried to purchase a ticket for the section we did not cover but found that the ticket machine would not allow it. We hopped on the train really going to Florence and it took off in the opposite direction as expected. Doh! We just sat and held our breath when a ticket inspector got on the train as we were not sure we had a valid ticket. I expected we were about to get a fine even though we had an explanation if he understood english. Luckily it was the weekend and he seemed bored and just sat down and played with his telephone and left us alone. The train did return to Florence but via a track that we had not been on previously. Phew. No Rufina but we were relieved just to get back.
We took a break then headed out for dinner. It started raining heavily with a lightning storm above. Too bad. We had raincoats and an umbrella much to the disgust of the umbrella sellers who no doubt had just put up the price of their products. Our aim was a restaurant on the other side of the river from the old city and as we walked the rain got heavier and heavier. We eventually got to our target area but could not find the restaurant so decided on pizza at a very popular place. Again we found the place impersonal and during eating our pizza another person was put at our table; weird and uncomfortable. Even worse was an African umbrella seller desperately trying to sell us an umbrella through a window to the street while we were eating!!!
We finished of our pizza and drink quickly and headed back into the rain. The storm was starting to move on but the rain was still heavy. The umbrella seller numbers seemed to have multiplied since we had been eating. The boom times had arrived. The sellers are mainly African, Turkish and Chinese. We counted over 25 sellers in the street section between the Uffizi gallery and the duomo which is not far at all.
We finally found a good use for our hot and closed up accommodation. A drying room for our clothes. We got changed and hung them up and by morning only our shoes were wet.