The Wagners in Rome: Florence

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Florence

(Helen writes...) Kev and I just got back from our Emmanuel Community Weekend in Florence. When in Australia, we would get together once a month at the home of James and Sarah McDonald in Clifton Hill. So our trip to Firenze was a bit different. Firstly, it took a lot longer to organise transport. Praise God, we have our wonderful friends Mark and Kate here who booked our train tickets for us. They were told that we would not be able to arrive at the main station of Florence on Saturday, and also that we would have to take our return trip quite late on Sunday because there was an old war bomb that was at the main station and was going to be removed. One of the Anderson's children said that they didn't want to go to Florence because there was a bomb. I tended to agree with him!

Anyways, The Andersons arrived at our place on Saturday morning with their five children, and we all headed to Termini station together. This was no small task - As I mentioned in the past, Rome is not really set up for pushers (strollers / baby carriers) so navigating around train stations with escalators is not easy. Also, we had a lot of luggage between us. Then by the time we found our train for Florence, we had trouble understanding what carriage we were supposed to get on. To cut an already long story short, we got on the wrong end of the train with about 7 seconds to spare. We had to lug all our luggage to the other end of the moving train with five children, a pusher, a baby's cot (crib) and all our luggage. We were very blessed to have a kind staff member who felt our pain and upgraded us to first class. The rest of the train trip was great!

In Florence, there was no one to meet us because of the situation with the wrong station. We got into two taxis and managed to get to the convent where the Andersons were staying. Then someone collected Kev and me and took us to the home of our host (member of the Emmanuel Community). The three of us arrived at the location for the Community Weekend at 4:30pm. It was great to catch up with people who I haven't seen in seven or eight years - Elena and Bepe, and Graziella. We received a very warm welcome. Including us and the Andersons, there were 11 Aussies, so they kindly interpreted talks for us and sang verses of each song in english. It reminded me of my old ESM days. The evening finished at 11pm. ARRRRRGGGG. The next day was short but sweet. It finished with lunch. After that a group of us hung around the beautiful city of Firenze. The weather was perfect and we had a great day.