It was a long flight from Seattle to Amsterdam to Florence. Shortly after John and I arrived Connie, Connie, Connie, Ron & Jim also made it to the small airport. From there, we took taxis to the train station so we could join the others at Cinque Terra.

We broke into two groups: The smart people and the, uh, not so smart people. We sent the smart people to get the train tickets while the dumb people wandered around. Our train to Florence was for 4:50, 30 minutes from now. John and I, being more idiot-savant than truly dumb, saw on the board that the train to Florence actually was leaving at 4:30. We ran (with our luggage) to the far rail line and missed the connection. At this both point both the smart and not-so-smart people realized something was afoot and they all started running around, missing each other, looking like a bad movie starring Will Ferrell (who is not just dumb but is truly bad).

We sent the smart people back to get new tickets for the next train. (We didn’t realize that our tickets were good for any train at any time -- I guess they weren’t so smart!) It got closer to 4:50, half the people were still in the ticket line and everyone else was still running around. Well, Jim and I were doing something important -- getting the wine!

This time WE ALL ran lickety-split to train and just made it. Then the idiot in charge (Connie, I think) decided we needed to be in the LAST car so we had to haul our luggage through car after car while the natives all laughed at us. (Or was that with us, I’m not sure, I was not in the smart group.)

So who were really the smart  people? I say Jim and myself for getting the wine that we enjoyed all the way to Cinque Terra.

Oh, and there’s a story about getting OFF the train, too. I’ll tell you all about that over a glass of wine.