Jiggity Jig

Matthew and I are back from Florence. That statement was preceded by 23 hours of travel time which included amazing BO, stomach flu in the ranks, very tired but spectacularly civilized children and a little itinterary deviation.
I never before realized that when your night train is 40 minutes late leaving Italy, that puts you in the middle of Swiss commuter traffic which necessitates being sidetracked (literally) for 40 minutes while the Swiss get to work. And when you are sidetracked for 40 minutes in Switzerland, that means that the Italian train can only take you as far as Dijon before it needs to turn around and go back to Italy. And that means that you have to pack up 120 twelve year olds on 15 minutes notice and jump on another train that will take you to Paris, but not to the station where the buses are waiting. So of course the buses have to drive to the new station, which is really so much more sensible than taking 120 children to the buses. However, because the buses have been waiting so long, the drivers are entitled to a 45 minute smoking break and the teachers are a little bleary eyed, and the DVD player doesn't work and we are under no circumstances letting these children off the bus because heaven only knows how long it would take us to round them up again, and so, it only took Matthew and I 23 hours to get back from Florence.

It was completely worth it.