Firenze (Florence), Italy

On early Thursday morning, Christian drove us to Modena and dropped us off at the train station.  In order to marry in Italy, we needed the U.S. Consulate to notarize the nulla osta form, the form saying that there are no obstacles for us to marry.  So here we were, awaiting the train to the regional U.S. Consulate in Firenze (Florence, to Americans).  Since we had nine o'clock appointments at the Consulate, Christian kindly offered to take us to the train station.  That was truly helpful as by this point we didn't know how to get to Modena via bus.  So here's Chuck waiting for the train at Modena.  It cost about twenty-seven euros for two one-way tickets to Firenze.

So there are more than one train station in Firenze.  There is one a few blocks from the U.S. Consulate, but we got off at the more northern one, Firenze Rifredi, as it said on our ticket destination.  Since we didn't know where we were and how to get to the U.S. Consulate, we decided to take a taxi.  However, we did buy a map and tried to figure out our location and destination, but to no avail.  Fortunately, we didn't choose to walk because it was a good ten minute ride to the Consulate.  It was about eleven euros for the taxi ride.  So we finally arrive at the U.S. Consulate and took fifteen minutes to notarize our nulla osta forms.  Here's Chuck after we finished with the paperwork.

Here's a picture of some church (?) while we were waiting for a taxi to the other train station, Firenze Rifredi.

We tried taking the train back from the closer train station, but they had a later departure time than the other train station.  So, we took a taxi back to the Rifredi train station and waited for our delayed train, about twenty minutes, to Modena.  Though Christian told us to call him when we arrived in Modena for a ride to Maranello, we decided to figure out the bus system.  There are buses by the train station, though we didn't know which one to take as they didn't look like the buses in Maranello.  Fortunately, there was a sign saying how to get to the Ferrari museum by taking buses 1, 2, or 4.  After much gesturing and attempting to understand the bus driver, we figured out that we needed to transfer onto another bus to get to Maranello.  She told us where to get off and pointed where we needed to catch the bus.  Ah!  The blue buses that looked familiar in Maranello, number 800.  So we hopped on a bus and made it to Maranello:)

That afternoon, Christian took us to the Maranello courthouse.   They weren't too familiar with Americans wanting to marry in Maranello, so they had to look up the process via books and on-line.  Making a long story short, we needed to do a few other things before we could marry there.  It seemed like such a process, especially when you don't speak the language and have no friends nor family around as a support system.  So Chuck and I decided to wait and we will be getting married in Seattle!  I'm so excited because we'll just have one wedding ceremony and everyone we know will be more likely to attend as Italy will be so far and expensive for people.  So now I'm back planning a wedding in Seattle.