Prato & Monterosso
Blogging is not on my side this morning … just finished typing a post, saved it, and it disappeared.
On Tuesday we got up early with plans of heading to Florence provided Hugh could get an appointment to see The David. Turns out they had no appointments, so instead we headed to Prato in seach of the famed Italian fabric. To say I was excited would be an understatement. I had researched online and wanted to find a street which was supposedly lined with fabric shop after fabric shop with shop owners selling samples on the street for pennies on the euro. The street was easy to find. The fabric shops were not. Apparently the information online was quite outdated.
Nearly four hours of searching in very hot and humid weather, and I threw in the flag. I did find the tourist office who informed me that the big factories were all in the industrial area and not walking distance, sadly.
Sweaty, stinky and extremely frustrated, we headed home and called it an early night.
Yesterday the kids really wanted to go to the beach again so we headed for the Cinque Terre, specifically Monterosso. After spending the day eating, exploring and beaching this quaint and darling little town we headed for the train station. The ticket lady sold us a return ticket via a town I had not heard of, but being that she was the “expert”, we went with it. She was either clueless or against Americans, because there wad no train connection to Lucca in that town I had not heard of.
Thankfully we had been on the trains enough that we were able to figure out a route home via two more train connections however once again we encountered a train that did not show up. The next train wasn’t for nearly two hours and we were pretty sure that would make us miss our last connection. We were right. And another taxi ride home was in our future …
All told, due to no-show trains and ticket sellers who have made mistakes at our cost, we are now out over $300.00. That said, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything as we are making memories here that will last a lifetime. And that, my friends, is priceless.
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