Jake & Erica - 0. Italian Trains - 2.

Jake and I travelled from Siena to Florence on Sunday. Happily, our train wasn't until 12:44, so we had a bit of time in the morning to sleep in, get breakfast, and get all packed up. We were worried that travelling might be a little rough after our wine filled Saturday, but we were actually both feeling great!

We headed to the train station in Siena fairly early. After our struggles with the trains in Rome, we wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time to get where we needed to be. However, when we got to the station, we realized that this was much smaller than Termini, and it was really easy to get to our platform. I was a little nervous because the man at the ticket desk told us that we couldn't get reservations for this train. I did NOT want to get stuck without a seat again, but he insisted that we wouldn't need them. And, he was right. When the train came, we got on and sat down with no issue. We made friends with a couple from Tenessee on the train. They were also headed from Siena to Florence.
Right around the time that the train was supposed to arrive at Florence, we pulled up to a station with big signs all around that said FIRENZE Redicci. Well, we knew that Firenze was florence so we hopped off. The husband of the couple we met hopped off as well, and his wife was a few steps behind him. The three of us watched in horror and shock as the train doors closed on her, and the train pulled away!! Jake and I felt so bad for the man and his wife. We offered to let him use our cell to give her a call, but sadly he didn't know her number.
After we got over this event, and took a moment to look around us, we realized that we were in a very small, fairly empty train station. This did not seem like Florence. After some research we realized that we were actually supposed to get off at the next stop - FIRENZE S.M.N. Oops. So we found the next train to the right station, hauled all of our bags down the stairs, then up the stairs to the correct platform, and sat down to wait. A few minutes later, they announced that our train had switched tracks and we needed to go to a new platform. So again we went down the stairs and up the stairs with all of our bags. Guess what happened next?? They switched the platform AGAIN! Back to the very same one that we started on. I thought Jake was going to hit someone if he had to drag that stupid giant suitcase around one more time, but luckily that was the final change, and a few minutes later the train arrived. We made it to Florence without further incident.
We parted ways with the husband before he found his wife at the station, so we're both still wondering if they ever managed to find each other. I really hope they did!