It was a moment that none of us will ever forget. Arriving by train in Tuscany, our transfer to a local bus was far more difficult that any of us had imagined. Despite the help of online maps and a rather rigorous pre-trip research process undertaken by my sister, Lisa, we were left, bewildered, with paper tickets in hand and no idea where to go.
Where do we catch the bus, exactly? It was a question we asked many people around the station. Pulling our carry-on luggage behind us, under a hot summer sun, we tried three different spots. In front of the train station, and just beside it, where big vehicles lumbered in and out every few minutes—just none with our designated route number above the windshield. One man behind the counter in a little shop, with a heavy Italian accent, explained that we weren’t in the right place at all. That buses destined for the far side of town leave from a weird subterranean station beneath a mall across the way….