Today is our last day in Florence ... we leave for Naples this afternoon. But before going we wanted to check out the dome in the Florence cathedral. We climbed 463 stairs up to the top ... inside you can see up close the frescos painted on the dome cieling which are absolutely gigantic! And amazing. And at the top, on a terrace outside you can overlook the city from 360 degrees. Of course it's just awsome! The stairs up are numerous, tiny (1 person wide) & spiralling. By the time I'd been up & down my legs were shaking! Caught our train to Naples ... we were told we couldn't reserve seats on this intercity train. But when we got on ... all the seats were already reserved :S Probably a language barrier problem there! Anywhoo ... in the halls they have these little fold down "seats" every 5 feet or so. So Geo sat on top of her pack & I on top of a seat & everyone in the hall - which was packed - had to turn sideways each time someone wanted to walk down the hallway. Needless to say it was not the comfiest trip we've made!!! Met a guy from Sicily, Dario (sp?) who was telling us about Naples & Rome (where he was headed). He wound up flipping through our book to find a place to stay in Rome w/ his buddy :) Stopped in at the tourist office for a map & the guy working insisted on phoning our hostel for us to see if they had room (we usually just walk over & find out b/c a lot of the countries here the payphones only take phone cards which you can only get in denominations as small as 5 Euros usually - not worth it for one or two phone calls). Turns out the hostel we'd wanted was full, but he phoned HI (the Hostel International) at my request & they had beds. So off we went to the HI hostel which is farther from the train station, but we were told it's a nice area. Got there & the hostel is pretty plain, but decent & cheap, and the neighbourhood was DIRTY!!! I don't know, other people we spoke to said Naples was nice, but the few roads we walked down were dirty & gross. We found a pizzeria for dinner just down the road from the hostel that makes your pizza from scratch right in front of you & then cooks it super fast in wood stove. Very cool. 
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