Maria-sama Ga Miteru:Volume17 Chapter 5 1

What Kind of City is the Capital of Flowers? Part 1

Monday.

They left Termini Station a little before 11 o'clock aboard a Eurostar, heading towards Florence. The Eurostar is a train like Japan's Shinkansen.

Unlike the subway, national railway stations have no ticket gate. Each person must carry a stamped ticket. If you forget the stamp, you may have to pay a fine. It appears that the system is unaffected by the tears of countless surprised travelers.

While eating sandwiches, they watched the rural landscape float past the windows.

The greenery filled their eyes. The color of dry earth. Clear sky. Stone buildings. The scenery that appeared and disappeared was just like an oil painting. Maybe the arts blossomed here because of the beautiful land.

They rode the Eurostar for around 1 hour 45 minutes, then arrived at the Santa Maria Novella station, which was the next place they were staying: Florence.

The Capital of Flowers, Firenze, was a small town. There were plenty of local buses running, but they got around on foot so that they could focus on the tourist attractions centered in a 700-meter radius around the Duomo, as printed in the guidebook.

So naturally, they walked from the train station to the hotel. To avoid the roads packed with tourists, they walked along the Arno river, and soon arrived at their hotel.

It was not yet check-in time, so they left their luggage and strolled around the vicinity of the Duomo. Although it was a small town, there was plenty to see. They could not go around and see everything. First, check what was Monday's class activity, the Sensei said.

The Duomo was a beautiful church, like something out of a fairy tale. Looking at its surface, it was glamorous like a wedding cake. It appeared like a round cake, covered all around with chocolate powder.

When she expressed these thoughts, her classmates guffawed with laughter.

"Yumi-san, are you sure you're not hungry?"

"Nothing of the sort. After all, just now when I saw that statue of the boar, I thought that I didn't want to eat it."

Well, there you go.

"So, if Yumi-san is hungry, do you think live cows, pigs, and chickens look delicious when you look at them?"

This evoked even more laughter. Certainly that wasn't it. Although, when she saw a crab in an aquarium, she did think it looked delicious.

"I've got it. Yumi-san is hungry for sweets right now."

At this moment, she could not deny that point. Why? Because right now in front of her eyes was the Basilica di San Lorenzo. As she looked at its walls, she imagined that it looked like a black tea chiffon cake with sides covered in combed icing.

"But, for me, that wasn't totally wrong."

Yoshino-san whispered quietly to herself.

Exactly.

Florence is a delicious-looking down that looks like a cake shop.