Stupid Florence!

We truly hated Florence. Granted, we didn't give it much of a chance. A few hours was plenty of time for us though. For any of you that like Florence, pardon this post.
We got to Florence and immediately walked to our hotel. It was in the middle of what was called Piazza Indipendenza (translation, 'hey stupid, run away!'). While walking, we passed by this creepy carousel that was just randomly placed in the middle of this park. No other rides or carnival makings any where near it. Very unusual, if you ask me. Melissa made it worse by adding carnival sounds when we passed.
As we arrived at the hotel, we sent Nicole up the lift ahead to get us checked in. The lifts weren't big enough for all 3 of us and our luggage. It was taking quite a long time, but she finally came to get us. Turns out, the reservation got messed up and they weren't expecting us for another day. THEY WERE BOOKED! Great! We waited for the manager to come back from lunch or start her shift for 15 min. or so. She didn't know what to do. She just kept saying that she didn't understand what had happened. She called another hotel down the street and got us a room there for the night. She assured us it was as nice of a hotel. "3 stars", she said. We walked back down the street to the Hotel Victoria. The lobby looked nice, but once we got to our room we all kept quiet. It was a spacious room, but it was a hole. The drapes were dingy, the bathroom disgusting (complete with small hairs in the sink) and the shower atrocious. (note the grime on the bottom of the shower curtain!) If this is what "3 stars" looks like in Florence, we weren't sure we wanted any part of it. We were so tired though. We'd been up early in Rome to go to the Vatican. We gingerly pulled back the bedding, hoping not to discover bed bugs, and rested for a couple of hours. Here's a picture of Mel and Nicole putting on their 'OMGosh' faces.
We walked around the city for about 5 minutes and just felt frightened. It was still day light, but it felt like we were being watched a little too closely. We all felt like targets. Nicole mentioned that she didn't want our last days in Italy to be here. We all agreed and decided to skip dinner to go back to the hotel and plan a way out of Florence. I called 5-7 hotels in Venice before I found one that had a vacancy for that night. We hustled down to the train station to exchange our tickets from Milan to Venice, packed our bags, and "got the hell out of dodge".

Here is a photo of me and Mel, happy to be leaving Florence.