Before we had left, we made sure we had the train schedule figured out - one left every hour from Pisa for Florence, so we knew we could make our destination.
The walk through the square to the tower was lined with shopping so it slowed Candace down significantly =) Also there were some really cool buildings to check out, a church and such
The tower itself was interesting - Definitely leaning. It looks like not much weight is really off to the side and that the lower right hand part of the structure is taking extra weight, but it does boggle me as to why it CONTINUES to lean more and more (so they say). Everyone else was taking pictures trying to prop the tower up, so we thought it would be more fun to try to push it over in our pics! =)
We walked around a bit more and then headed back to the station, grabbed our bags, and headed out to Florence. Unfortunately we didn't make it by train… Our train came to a stop at a super small station somewhere inbetween and people started slowly getting out.. We got off to go investigate and found out that there was a fire on the track somewhere up ahead and they were not sure if it would take a couple hours or the rest of the day before the train moved.. We went inside and I checked the next train scheduled to leave, it arrived and people started piling on. We got on hoping it would leave, but after a few minutes I had a feeling everyone on this packed train would soon be getting off and be stranded like we just were a few minutes before from our other train. This is because you'd have to reason that there isn't ANOTHER track that this train is going to take to Florence just because its a new train. So I got out and checked with a conductor and got confirmation I was right, headed back into the train to grab Candace, and we found a taxi with 6 other people before the hordes of people came to do the same thing and were able to split the 50 minute ride to Florence.
Once we arrived in Florence we went across the street to the tourist info center, grabbed a map and some info then walked 5 minutes to meet our host and hostess - Nycholas and Mrs Martin. Mrs Martin was super helpful and told us a bunch of restaurants that only locals go to as well as some landmarks we could hit. We took off heading on a cool walk with a sunset bridge in mind as a final destination along the river. Along the way we were walking on a street filled with vendors in tents on either side of the street. Alot of these vendors had stores behind the tents in actual buildings. It was interesting to see this strategy which is super effective and visually stimulating as well as vocally engaging for the store owners right as you are walking by.
As we went along we noticed that Florence is cleaner than Rome and Cinque Terre, which was nice. We soon came upon the Cathedral which was the most beautiful outside to a cathedral we had seen perhaps besides La Familia in Barcelona. We think this is partly because of the colors - they used Marble, such as green and orange to make the outside not just made of stone and able to retain color evenly and nicely over the years. It was also fairly humongous.
Shortly, the road opened up into a cool plaza that was quite large and had the Statue of David as well as a dozen other statues and a quire singing some music. We grabbed some snapshots of some of the statues -
I contemplated the size of this one guy in the statue (on left) and began to imagine what it would be like if there was a guy actually that size or if the statue were to come to life. There would literally be no predators on land that he would fear. He could crush any man with a blow, kill lions, defeat a colony of gorillas, push over elephants, and basically be a force to be reckoned with. I would immediately bow before such a creature.
Back to reality, we headed to a cool Pizzaria and had the best margarita pizza I've ever had - the sauce was just so awesome, i asked for some more just so I could dip the crust into it. We got absorbed watching MTV while we ate, then headed out and got to the bridge where all the Jewlery vendors should have been but weren't because it was past time. So we sat on the bridge and enjoyed the sunset
We headed back home taking a different route and catching some street art and music along the way!
In the morning we headed to the fruit market across the street we had a ton of fruit and cut a delicious cantaloupe up mmmmmm. Candace showed me how she was taught to cut it and eat it and I showed her how we ate it when I was younger - just grab one slice and eat off it like you're eating corn -
Go Cutco knife on the cutting board!
I headed to the post office while candace did laundry and after we finished we caught the bus to the far southeast end of the city to a cool spot on a hill to view the whole city from. It was SUPER hot out so I took up on a tip I learned and soaked my shirt with water, ringed it out and threw it on to dry as I walked around. It doesn't even look wet because its all uniformly the same color and it feels awesome. And it dries in like 30 minutes to an hour too.
We started walking down to the river and took that route over towards that Jewelry Bridge we were at the day before. We saw an interesting street sign next to a cool little cafe along the river -
It was Open today and crazy! Definitely the biggest combination of jewelry stores I've ever seen.
You could walk into the stores and check out jewelry while outside their windows was the river and a beautiful view from inside the shop. It sure would be one of the coolest places to run a store - busy every day, beautiful view and in Florence.
My shirt was dry so I soaked it again and after we got our fill of Jewelry and I had tried on a 39,000 euro Rolex, we found Candace a pretty sweet skirt down the street at a shop and busted out a picnic. Since we've got into the habit of carrying at least a "mini picnic" with us all the time, its easy for us to stop at a bridge or under some shade on a bench in a cool place and to have a mini lunch or snack. This time we found a bench in a square and people watched, while listening to a live band play indian music.
Walking back home through the line of shops, I picked up a fake Rolex for $20 euros. I was missing mine!! I figure it will be good for places on trips that I don't want to wear my real Rolex at. Also, you simply cannot tell it's authenticity unless you were to look closely or to actually hold on to it. All the materials are pretty crappy and I'll probably have to keep it out of the water, but for $20 euros who cares. Also the fact that it DOES time fine and feels almost like a rolex on my wrist is cool. Plus it keeps me from being too homesick from my real one back at the states. =)
We headed back home and got changed + ready and headed to the restaurant where our host, Nycholas works at for some dinner. Great atmosphere and amazing specialty soup
Awesome food, and terrible service (by some stupid waiter). Since you generally don't tip over here in Europe (unless you feel they went definitely out of their way or were super helpful, then you leave like a couple bucks, even if the bill is like $40 or something), it's kind of interesting because usually service is decent and sometimes great. But you occasionally get a crappy one and you think - oh well you won't get your tip… but ends up they weren't going to get one anyways! We agreed that this waiter is lucky they weren't in the states because they would need another career, but we didn't let it affect our dinner and just laughed at it and still had a great time. We ordered the specialty that our Host said to get - the Carne platter!! Florence meat specialty -
Then we headed out to watch the semi-finals of the Europe Cup for Futbol - Spain was playing Portugal. We definitely rooted for Spain and, although the game was slow, at the end was an awesome shootout which took the score from 0-0 to a win for Spain who won the shootout with a 4-2 score.
The bartender was just filling waters with tap water then the waiter would deliver them to the tables and twist the cap off FOR the people. My suspicions were confirmed and so I called them out on it when they had a 3 euro charge for a small water I had ordered (and I ordered tapwater too and they brought the stillwater instead). Of course they denied it, so I just didn't pay for it because they were ripping me off and we all knew it so they did nothing as I walked out. We had a fun walk back to our flat and enjoyed the night walk. Soon we were home and shortly after up and heading to Venice!! We only had one day in Venice so the goal was to make the most of it, which we did and Candace wrote about yesterday and I'll post tomorrow hopefully. We are in Interlocken, Switzerland which we headed to from Venice. Its beautiful and reminds me of Whistler and Maine combined into one with the Road to Hanna in Hawaii mixed in there.. =)
JJ
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