My title is in reference to the scene of Homer Simpson and the Simpson family on vacation in Pisa. Homer attempts to speak Italian and makes a bunch of random noises and hand motions aka Italian :P
To tie in Homer to myself, this past weekend (yes I have been super lazy and procrastinated writing a post about my trip 6 days ago -.-) to Firenze (Florence) and Pisa (...Pisa).
We left for Firenze on Friday via bus, something along the lines of a greyhound I suppose. We were originally going to go by train, but noticed that the bus tickets were slightly cheaper. Little did we know that the bus drops you off in the middle of nowhere and you end up having to pay for a taxi that in total costs more than if we had just taken the train. I think the best phrase to sum up living in Italy thus far is: you live and you learn. In the previous weeks, I would beat myself up for getting ripped off or not making the smarter decision of doing something that would save me both time and money, but now I look at these mishaps as learning experiences. How could we have known if we didn't make that mistake? Anyways, I regress, so we get off the bus which ended up dropping us off in the middle of the highway by a turnabout. We took a taxi to our hostel. This was my first time staying in a hostel and I would have to say that my experience was rather pleasing. I stayed at Plus Hostel (http://www.plusflorence.com/) with 7 other girls. The hostel was really clean, had a pool, a sauna, and a steam room, and for only 15 a night! What a snag.
Upon arrival, after dropping our stuff off at the hostel, we were hungry for pizza seeing as we hadn't had dinner on our 3.5 hour long bus ride. As we entered the restaurant we immediately sensed the difference between Milan and Florence. Florence is filled with good old Amuricans. How could you tell? They stuck us in the back of the restaurant because we came in flocks and we were loud and obnoxious :P It was then and there that I am really glad I didn't go to either Florence or Rome. Being a tourist, I know how annoying we can be.
Saturday morning we woke up bright and early and plotted out all the places we wanted to visit. We started by going to the Accademia to see the main attraction: Michelangelo's Renowned David. I remember doing a sharpie dot picture of a imitated bust of David. Even then, I was marveled by the beauty of David. His face and hair was so perfectly sculpted...now imagine standing in front of the actual statue. The statue itself is HUGE, at least 3-4x as big as a normal person. For some reason I always thought he was normal size. But it isn't just his magnitude that was awe-inspiring, it was him; his physique, the precision, the attention to detail, the gracefulness of his pose. I really wanted to snag some photos of him with my Nikon, but no photos were allowed. Thanks to modern day technology, we have camera devices in just about everything. So naturally I used my handy dandy iTouch to "check my email".
After we left David, we started heading towards Florence's Duomo: Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. The duomo in Florence was also breathtaking, like the Duomo in Milan, but it was very different. It's a different type of architecture with different stones and different colors. Both are beautiful and unique in their own way, but I might be slightly biased and say that the Duomo in Milan still holds true in my heart. The Basilica is much more enclosed, whereas the Duomo is very open and is pretty much the center of attention and center of Milan. Therefore, the Duomo has a grandeur appearance. Regardless of which one is my favorite, I think my favorite part of the day was climbing the Basilica and seeing the view from atop. Definitely worth the 8 euros :) I also got a great quad and butt workout from climbing copious amounts of spiral stairs...
Afterwards, we went to eat at an osteria. Was not too impressed with the place because it ended up costing 12 euros with service charge and everything and the portion was very very small. But my dissatisfaction was made up with GELATO! We basked under the Tuscan sun eating our gelato in front of another less famous church (I forget the name...). It was great, I laid in the grass soaking in the sun while listening to this guy play the guitar and sing, very soothing.
We ended our adventures by going to the market. Florence is known for their leather, and going with 7 other girls, I wouldn't expect anything less in terms of spending 2 hours shopping for memorabilia, cheap things, leather products, and boots. I'm not a huge fan of real leather or fur, but I did get a great pair of wanna-be Ray Bans! After all this shopping we decided to indulge ourselves with a 3 course dinner. By the time dinner rolled around, which was around 9, we were FAMISHED since we had next to nothing for lunch. The 2nd best part of the day was dinner. 1st course: spaghetti with bolognese sauce 2nd course: pork fillet submersed in white wine sauce 3rd course: Tiramisu!
Needless to say we went home happy campers. We had originally planned to go out because Florence is known also for their nightlife, probably because of all the American tourists and their need to par-tay 24-7, but we decided to stay in seeing as we were trying to catch the 9:00 train to Pisa, which is only 1 hour from Florence, and tickets only cost 5 euros one way.
Pisa is a very very very small town. Because of my ignorance, I always assumed that Pisa, and other famous landmarks, were all bunched together, neatly and nicely for us to see. But no, the leaning tower of Pisa is in Pisa, fancy that, which like I said before, is a pretty small town. It was great though, it was the perfect escape from the tourist ridden streets of Florence. Quaint, small, and easily accessible by foot. When we reached the tower, we were all shocked by it's size. All of us imagined it to be much bigger than it actually was. Despite it's "disappointment" in size, the tower was still pretty freaking amazing and really really cooooool :D Natually we took a bunch of silly pictures of us pushing the tower, leaning against the tower, kicking the tower, holding the tower, etc etc.
After 2 hours in Pisa we headed back to Florence and headed towards the Uffizi Museum which is most famous for it's painting of Venus. The museum was awesome, the paintings and sculptures were awesome. Bonus points for free entrance with our Italian student ID! And to conclude our trip, we ended it Ponte Vecchio, which is basically a bridge with shops on it. It is famous because it is the only bridge in Florence with shops on it. In the past, these bridges would contain shops, restaurants, etc overlooking the river, but this is the only bridge that remains. We made it in time for sunset, so the colors were beautiful.
That about sums up my trip to Firenze and Pisa! I will post pictures in accordance to this post, I just needed to write this before I forgot things and before I got too lazy.
Next adventure: Skiing in the Alps. First time skiing. I'll be that chick rolling off the mountain :)
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