A seat! A seat!

Welcome to Florence, the city where you only get a seat whilst eating if you're paying at least AUD40 for a meal. Or know where to go in the back streets. Welcome to Shot Cafe, a tiny little oddball bar with a restaurant that serves decent, cheap food, even cheaper drinks, and offers free indoor seating and wireless internet access. I'm in heaven!

Rewind back to Rome, where I spent my last day visiting the Capuchin Crypt and the National Museum. The crypt was really something else - I don't think I realised the sheer magnitude of the idea until I walked through and saw five chapels and a corridor linking them all decorated with endless bones. The best indication of the number of individuals used is the chapel walls - nearly all the chapels is lined with human femurs and skulls numbering in the hundreds per wall. They did use something like 4000 skeletons for the decorations, but I didn't appreciate this number until I saw it. This place isn't for the sqeamish though - most of the chapels also contain intact skeletons... well, really corpses, as they still have mummified flesh articulating the bones and creating creepy overtight faces. On to the museum, where a display about the development of marble use in the Roman Empire was truly captivating (despite the fact that I couldn't tell all the supposed differences in the busts over the centuries). The top floor was dedicated to floor mosaics and wall friezes, with an entire house carefully reconstructed in several viewing rooms. I was about to leave when I noticed a downstairs - with the most thorough collection of Roman coins imaginable, dating from the first traded standardised lumps of metal through to the modern Euro. I'm so glad I didn't miss that.

I waved a sad goodbye to the Beehive and its amazing organic kitchen and headed to Florence, where I effectively have a room to myself - I booked a bed in a five-bed dorm, which only has four beds in it, and so far there's not a dormie to be seen. If you stick your head slightly out my window and endure the cold there are magnificent views of the Ponte Vecchio and the river from four floors up. On the downside, the place is darkly decorated, making it feel cramped, and the promised free dinners are only available at another hostel run by the same people. Even access to the kitchen is limited - most of the time the door is shut and locked, with a sign declaring "Private, No Entry" on the door.

Yesterday was orientation day - I wandered the streets on what locals claimed was the coldest day in a long time, getting used to where everything is. Forgetting how close things are around here, I stumbled into the San Lorenzo markets, and naturally went on a shopping spree. I've nearly finished my Christmas shopping and found the most stunning coat - it's black and colourful at the same time, and quite warm. I'm guessing it's a ripoff of a fancy designer brand, because I saw almost the same design for about eight times the price in a posh boutique window this morning.

This morning I spent some time planning the rest of my stay, then headed to Santa Maria Novella (the train station) to book seat reservations for my four day outings and trip to Bolzano. After standing in a queue that lasted for all eternity, the nice ticket man told me which trains to take for local trips (Pisa, Assisi and Siena) so that I avoided paying seat reservation prices, but Milan needed a reservation, as did the Florence to Bologna half of the trip to Bolzano. I was quite impressed with the guy though - in total he saved me about EUR70.

Another hour until the Archaeology people open the museum again post-siesta, and I've just about killed the appropriate welcome time for one meal here at Shot. Downside of Florence - there are very few indoorsy places to sit for a while hiding from the cold (and, in today's case, the rain) without paying killer prices for entry or food. I think I might head off to Fesitval for a gelato... and a hot chocolate.

Ciao, a dopo! S