We pulled out a map and Lyle directed our journey to the campground. It didn't appear to be more than a few km so we weren't concerned. I was hungry (what else is new) so we stopped at a local bakery and Lyle got a sandwich and I had a very delicious piece of pizza. We hadn't gotten lost at all so we figured this journey was going quite well. We knew we needed to go uphill we just didn't realize the size of the hill, by the time we reached the bottom of the hill we were already tired and sweating and as we looked up we knew it was not going to be fun. Lyle was angry with there's not being a bigger disclaimer from the campground that there was a large hill to climb and I was just exhausted. Somehow we survived the hike with our packs and were rewarded at the too with a fabulous view of the city, but we still we not in great moods. The campground was another half kilometer up the road and we finally arrived. Lyle proceeded to check in with reception where my grumpy husband told the lady under no circumstances was he leaving our passports because he didn't trust them. Now it's pretty laughable we were both so hot and tired at the time and I just stayed away from the interaction. Our campground was in the middle of an olive grove which was really cool but all in all the campground was a disappointment after the one in Venice.
After some rest and cool down time we decided that we should go explore the city since we had less than 48 hours there. We walked back into town and crossed the river at Pont Vecchio which has shops onto sides of the bridge and is mostly filled with goldsmiths, it was pretty cool. We spent a few hours wandering through the permanent market areas where leather and linen products lined booth after booth. As the booths closed up for the evening we made our way toward a restaurant for which we were given a coupon in our checkin package.
The restaurant was completely empty when we got there (we were still having a hard time with the late European supper hour) but we were welcomed once we figured out that it was open. Our coupon entitled us to 3 courses from the daily menu for an amazing price. Lyle started with lasagna and I had gnocchi in a cheese sauce, which turned out to be a blue cheese but was still good. For our main courses Lyle had salmon which he claimed to be one of the best pieces of fish he has had in a long time (I actually liked the salmon so they must have done something right). I had a beef stew and it was delicious! For dessert we were brought a cream pie of sorts with real chocolate pieces...mmmm!
After dinner we headed toward the train station to figure out how to catch the bus back to the campground. We managed to buy tickets as well as a pass for the hop on hop off bus tour for the following day. We arrived without getting lost and without having to climb the ridiculous hill so I classify that as a win!
Our full day in Florence started early as we had decided to purchase tickets for the Hop-On/Hop-Off bus. It was convenient because there a stop right by our campground, meaning we didn't have to walk down the mountain. We were both very glad for that. We have noticed the humidity to be very high here, so much so that we our closes never seemed to be dry. It was kind of like taking an Oreo and putting it on the counter and coming back in a few minutes and it’s lost all of its crunchiness. (Random note: this is the last place it has rained on our journey)
We had an early lunch at a little concession by the road. We both had paninis that were so fresh and so tasty. We definitely struck gold here after nearing our limit on tasteless sandwiches. Heather had the "Londoner", which I ended up copying the next day. The bread in Florence is so good and they make it without salt. They also have some of the best meats and salami we have experienced so far.
So we hopped on our bus and did the tour around the city. The commentary really focused on the romantic nature of the city rather than historical and interesting facts, but it was still worthwhile. We were able to see a lot of the old buildings and portions of the ancient wall that surrounded the city. It was neat to see the old Mint that doubled as a defense tower for ships that once crossed the Arno river. Today, they river is no longer passable because they have dammed sections of it; I think in order to control flooding. That was sad to see, it’s not as impressive a sight as the Thames or the Seine.
Our bus journey took us to a little village called Fiesole, located at the top of a mountain and giving an incredible view of the valley. Fiesole was once a Roman rival city with Florence, but eventually with the fall of the Roman Empire, the city bowed out to Florence as the capital city of the region. We got off and explored here for about an hour. We were once again faced with Europe’s famous inclined pedestrian walkways in order to get to a vantage point to see the whole valley. It was really worth it. The Valley is so beautiful, it’s no wonder there is so much romanticism written about this place. We explored some streets and saw what was discovered of the early Roman city that was destroyed. The bell tower was my favourite part as it was the life size version of the rook in chess.
We headed back down to the city center and switched buses to see what the other line showed. We eventually finished our tour and got off so we could walk along the bank of the Arno until we hit Ponte Vecchio. Here we turned towards the city center for some sightseeing and to check out the famous leather shops that Florence is known for. The shops are all over the place, a lot like Camden Market in London. Each stall has amazing leather goods ranging from jackets to purses to wallets to belts to briefcases and more. All the work is done locally, and what impressed me the most was the quality and colours of the leather. They really had every colour under the rainbow and very classy colours and styles at that! It’s definitely the place you want to go if you want anything to do with leather!
We were getting a little hungry and thought it was time for a snack to hold us over to supper. Great story coming up . . . we noticed someone holding a giant cone of gelato that looked absolutely decadent. We both decided we wanted one, so we headed to the store to check out their flavours. They had every kind of fruit medley and savoury flavour possible. We looked at the prices and the two scoops cost what we would normally spend. So Heather ordered raspberry and chocolate, and the lady scooping it up was more than generous with her portions. We were astonished at how much they gave you for two scoops. I was so excited, so I ordered blackberry and chocolate. So a pulled out a 10 Euro bill to pay at the till and to our shock, he said it cost 24 Euro. Yup, we just go swindled!! Apparently she didn't quite hear "two scoops" instead of the biggest cone you can get with two flavours. We just looked at each other in wonder. We both decided that it looked far too good to throw a fuss and paid the money and skipped supper that night. Skipping supper wasn't very difficult after you down over a liter of Gelato and have food twins and a sugar high for the rest of the evening.
We sure did draw a lot of attention as we walked down the street and heard a lot of girls asking their boys if they could have one like ours. We had a good time laughing it off and enjoying the best gelato we had eaten on our trip. It did help curb our disappointment that for the quantity and quality, we didn't really overpay, we just didn't want to eat so much. We eventually arrived at the famous Duomo cathedral and tried desperately to finish our gelato before it melted. While we were waiting we were able to overhear a tour guide speak about the Duomo, which we learned is the third largest domed cathedral in the world. It is a self supporting dome structure that was not finished until several years after the rest of the structure because they didn't have the technology or building practices to actually build the dome. They ended up using a scaffolding system that was revolutionary at the time.
After walking around and taking pictures, we did some more market shopping, where Heather bought a beautiful white skirt that we had been eyeing for several weeks on the locals. White clothing is definitely very fashionable over here, especially the closer you get to the sea.
(Can you see the hidden door?)
As we weren't feeling all that great from our gelato babies, we decided to head home. We also decided (well, it was mostly me) to walk back up the mountainous hill in order to burn off some of the gelato. It was much easier this time without our packs. Once we got to the top we noticed that the boxing ring that had been set up the day before in the parking lot of the lookout had a lot of commotion around it. We walked on over and yes indeed they were having a boxing match. We came in at the beginning and watched all three bouts. It was really neat to see since I had announced boxing in Edmonton and was eager to compare what a real match looked like. They had about a hundred or more spectators and we learned it was a Boxing Italia match with what looked like three different age groups. The top age group was very exciting to watch. And need I mention the view . . . what a place for a bout!
We had a great time watching and afterwards returned to the campground for our final night in Florence. It was a short stay but we really enjoyed it. We would definitely stay somewhere else, but other than that, we had no complaints about our time there.
So today we bid farewell to Florence and travel to our next Italian city; Pisa. We couldn’t resist getting another sandwich from our favourite vendor at the lookout point. Still some of the best paninis I’ve ever had. While we were waiting, we had put our bags down at our table and I stayed with them while Heather ordered. At the table next to us a group of four girls did the same but all of them went to order in line. Randomly, an old Italian just sat down at their table. They looked a bit confused at why he was sitting there. Eventually one of the girls went to him and through the hand talking (Italians love to hand talk we have discovered), he said because they weren’t sitting down they couldn’t save the seat. They moved to a different table, but I thought that was pretty rude on his part. That sparked a conversation about who the nicest people have been on our trip so far. We both agreed it was the people from Stratford (though now it is Greece, nothing against Stratford but Greece as a whole has been so friendly and accommodating).
After we ate we caught the bus to the train station and ended up sitting across from another backpacker that was staying at Michelangelo Camping as well. He was from Australia and when he heard we were from Canada, he full out guessed we were from Lethbridge. We were astonished he got that right, but found out he had met 4 people from Canada on different occasions and all of them were from Lethbridge. Small world eh!! He told us about his adventures and how he was travelling most every country in Europe by himself over a period of 6 months. He would do a city in a few days and then head on to the next place he felt like. He was a really neat guy and made our train ride seem much shorter than it was. He also commented on how Italians had to stand by the door to get off the train nearly 30 minutes before it arrived, something we had noticed as well. Literally, with 30 minutes to go till we arrived in Pisa, there was a lineup of at least a dozen people at the door.
We bid farewell to our friend as we got off the train and followed the directions from the hotel to reach the hotel. We bought tickets for the bus, but then it told us to get on a bus in front of a certain hotel right outside the train station, that was kind of hard because that hotel didn’t exist anymore. We eventually found the right bus and got on it, but after riding it to the airport, stopping for 10 minutes there, then coming all the way back to the train station, we realized we should have caught it on the other side of the street. No harm done, we were now going the right way. Our directions said to get off at a certain stop, and so we were on the lookout for that stop. After passing through the entire city and now heading out to the country side, we realized we had missed the stop. Luckily the bus followed the same route back into town and we got off at what we thought was the right stop. We discovered that the bus stop was named correctly, but they didn’t use that name when calling for the stop; a lot of good that did us.
To get to our hotel we needed to walk right through the Field of Dreams (actually called the Campo de Miracioles, but Heather called it the Field of Dreams), the walled section that houses the church and the Leaning Tower. There were thousands of people there and a huge row of souvenir shops we would check out later. We checked into our hotel at another hotel that owned both of them. Our room is not even a city block away from the Leaning Tower. How cool is that! We are on the third floor (which they like to call the second floor) and no elevator, which after hauling our packs around is never a fun thing to finish off the trip with. Our room is quite nice with a window looking into a courtyard with the tallest cactus in Pisa climbing up the building. We dumped off our stuff and decided to do some wondering around before supper.
We wandered through the Field of Dreams and checked out what it cost to climb the tower. Since the restoration work to correct the angle of tilt and clean up and fix the deteriorating marble, they only allow guided tours of 30 people at a time to climb to the top. Unfortunately, we didn’t feel like spending the money, nor climbing another very tall tower. We enjoyed our view from down below. One thing we really enjoyed was seeing everyone trying to take pictures with them either pushing the tower over or keeping it from falling down. We decided we would try the same poses tomorrow when it was a bit lighter out.
We stopped at a restaurant nearby for supper and to watch the Euro Cup game. The tournament has the same following in Europe as World Cup does for the world. We watched England and Italy tie 1-1. Our meal consisted of a sampling of the various types of salamis they make locally. Heather ordered Gnocchi again, while I had fettuccini with mushrooms. The food was very good! We also managed to snatch a picture of a Tom Cruise look-alike that was having supper at the table across from us.
We finished off the day with a stroll down the streets of Pisa. We got a picture with Heather next to these three wheeled, super tiny delivery carts that we had seen before.
Our full day in Pisa started off with us heading back to the Field of Miracles, greeted once again by thousands of tourists. Even though we are tourists ourselves, they can really be annoying sometimes when they are in slow moving herds of 50 or so that block the entire walkway. Anyway, we took the typical pictures of each of us trying to hold up the tower while seeing other watch us and think it’s an ingenious idea. We perused the vendors’ stalls and eventually had some simple lunch while checking out some street entertainers all painted in metallic silver and stay perfectly still until someone paid them to take a picture.
We walked around the outside of the wall that encompasses the old city and just admired the sights and sounds of the city. We eventually headed towards the centre of the city where the river Arno passes through. The city is home to roughly 100 000 people, with 60 000 of them being students at the university. The university is also spread out throughout the city with a faculty in this area but surrounded by residential or commerce. We walked along the Arno (which was flowing much better than in Florence) and admired the buildings along its stone walled bank. All the buildings have candle holders that trace the outline of the windows, doors, and trim. Once a year the city has a celebration in which hundreds of thousands of candles are lit along both sides of the Arno to celebrate the patron saint of Pisa. We were a bit too early for that, but it was neat to imagine what it would have looked like.
As we turned back in the direction of the tower, we took a route through the shopping section of the city. Disappointingly and annoyingly, most shops close up for a few hours in the afternoon to go drink or something. It’s like the afternoon siesta in which most of the city shuts down. We were resigned to just window shop as we made our way back to the hotel. Since we were both a bit tired for our journeys we decided to take a short nap before supper.
At supper we ate at another local restaurant and enjoyed another match of Euro Cup. We both had spaghetti with meat sauce and steak. The steak, however, was cooked very well but had no seasoning or flavor. Heather was quite disappointed with it, but I was just happy for a traditional piece of meat! For dessert we had panna cotta with caramel on top. It was very delicious, being one of the best Heather has had. Afterwards we spent the rest of the night watching a movie in bed.
So Pisa was a great place to visit, though it could easily be done in a day. There were several museums and other tours that were available, but at this point we were museum and toured out. We would definitely recommend Pisa to anyone who would love to see one of the world’s greatest construction ‘wups’!
So great to hear from you again. Just love the stories - can almost hear your voices in the commentary. What an adventure you are having. Can't think of a better way to begin your life together.
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