A few months before, I had planned an Italian vacation for my week off with one of my best friends from university, Ivana. Both of our flights would fly into Bologna on Thursday morning, where we would meet up, and head off to Tuscany. Unfortunately, Spain decided to have a countrywide strike on Thursday, so I had to take the bus into Madrid on Wednesday, spend the night in the airport, and wait to see if RyanAir would cancel my flight. Luckily, I was on the same bus as a friend of mine from a town over and we were able to catch up during the two-hour trip to Madrid. When I got there, I had dinner with and hung out with my friend Juan until about 3.00am, when he drove me to the airport. At the airport, I didn’t sleep any, but I did get some Kindle time in and made friends with a Greek girl.
Around 5.00am, I moved closer to the RyanAir check-in counter. People were still stretched out all over the floors when suddenly, anyone who was managing sleep was surly awoken up by the sirens, whistles, and chants of the people on strike. They had come into the airport to throw fliers at us and, I suppose, try to get us not to fly? If anyone in the terminal had supported their cause before, by the time the strikers quieted down almost half an hour later, they had most likely lost most of those supporters.
I was able to check-in, go through security, get to my gate, and get on a bus that would take us out to the board the plane. The only affect the strike had on me was on that bus. All of us stood, doors closed, jammed in like sardines, on the bus for over half an hour while we waited for…I don’t know what. After finally reaching the plane and boarding, I passed out, waking up about 20 minutes later and noticing we were still on the ground. Then, a flight attendant made an announcement saying, “We remind you to turn off electronics before takeoff and that smoking is not permitted on board…especially right now…as we are fueling up.” SO many things wrong with that, I can’t even explain. Oh, RyanAir. We finally took off and I was able to sleep for about an hour and after another hour, we landed in Bologna.
In Bologna, I had to wait a few hours for Ivana’s flight to get in, so I grabbed a nutella cornetta and my first (of many, many) cappuccino of the trip and waited. My reunion with Ivana was great! We picked up right where we had left off when I left in September. We hopped on a bus to the train station, bought our tickets to Florence, grabbed some paninis from a café (where the Italian man called America “Obama’s Land”), and then got on our train. The train ride was uneventful, though we did have little compartments (a la “Harry Potter”) and upon leaving, I almost forgot my purse (luckily a woman in our compartment called after me to tell me).
Our hostel/bed & breakfast/guesthouse was really close to the Florence train station, so we found it pretty easily. It was a great place. The owner, Francesco, was an energetic little man who gave us maps, pamphlets, and any other information about Florence/Italy we could ever dream of. Our room was great, as it was a private room with a TV and a shared bathroom (which was basically ours). After taking (much needed) showers and booking a tour out into Tuscany for Sunday through Francesco, we headed off to explore the city.
Before seeing any of the spectacular sights, we had our priorities. Get gelato. Again, that gelato was the first of many, many gelatos over the trip, and was great. Once pleased, we saw the Duomo, and wandered around, stopping to take pictures of the fake “David” (“Favid”).
Then, we crossed the river, seeing the beautiful Ponte Veccio, and made the steep trek up to Piazza Michelangelo, where there is a wonderful panoramic of the city. We still hadn’t gotten a picture of the two of us together and were determined to get one with all of Florence in the background. First, we asked an English-speaking couple to take one. But, we weren’t pleased with the product. Next, we spotted an Asian couple, that obviously didn’t speak English, but we were able to convince them to take our picture. After the man took our picture and gave us a big thumbs-up, we thanked them and walked away. Turned out that the man never even took the picture…so much for that.
Exhausted, we decided it was time for wine. We found a nice plaza and sat for a while, drinking our first (should I say it again? …of many) glasses of wine. Refreshed, we decided to take our time finding a place for dinner, preferably away from the tourist center. We ended up walking for a good two hours before finding a small pizza place, tucked away in a residential neighborhood. The pizza, wine, and tiramisu were all incredible. We would soon learn over the next week that for the two of us to find an acceptable breakfast/lunch/dinner place, it would take at least one and up to three hours of wandering around. No one can say we didn’t get our exercise…
That night, we settled in and watched a delightful movie in our room, called “12 Rounds.” I highly recommend it. That night, we slept so well, as neither of us had slept more than two hours in the last 36.
Friday morning, we went on a “free” walking tour (had to tip at the end). The tour was okay. The other people on it were all study abroad kids (yes, I know, I was once one) and were all loud and obnoxious. Our tour guide was alright, though he didn’t speak English as well as one would think would be necessary to give tours. Some interesting things we saw on the tour were: little doors in the walls that people used to knock on and out would come a glass of wine; the piazza where soccer/football was invented; the place gelato was invented; and the pizza place the “Jersey Shore” cast worked at during their Florence season. You can guess which was the most exciting for our group.
Our feet had been absolutely destroyed the day before (we wore flats), so we went on an adventure into H&M to get new shoes. I got bright red sneakers, and Ivana got green ones. We were happy with our purchases.
For lunch we decided to cross the river, and once again, spent over an hour trying to find a place. When we finally settled on a small restaurant, secluded from the busy streets, we were very pleased. We ate some wonderful pasta, caprese salad, wine, desserts, and espresso. Half carafes of wine became our new best friend.
Neither Ivana nor I had much interest in paying to see the “real” David, when we had seen “Favid,” or paying to wander around the Uffizi Gallery. We much preferred to spend our money on food, and time, wandering the city. But, one thing we both decided would be worth the money was going to see the grounds of the Pitti Palace. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, sunny and not a cloud in the sky, so we spent the next few hours lounging around the gardens. While exploring, we were scolded once for trying to enter a building that a group had just come out of with a stern, “Ladies. No.” I still wonder what was in there…
When we left, we got our gelato for the day, walked a bit, then set up camp on the patio of a café and ordered a bottle of wine to share. When I ordered it, the barman gave me a strange look. What? Ordering a bottle of wine for two people at 4.00 in the afternoon with no food isn’t normal? As we started in on the bottle, another worker brought us a free sandwich. We thought, “Oh, it must be our American beauty.” But then we saw another table of guys with the same sandwich. But then, half an hour later when the man brought us another sandwich, we realized it was neither our beauty nor a normal plate to give out to customers…he was trying to make sure we didn’t get too rowdy. When he approached us, holding a third sandwich, Ivana looked at him and said, “Really??” Apparently, the sandwich was for the table next to us, but he said, “I can bring you another! You want?” We said no thanks, and then he said, “I am afraid you are too high.” We’re pretty sure he meant to say drunk. Apparently he didn’t know that a bottle of wine, spread over almost two hours, would in no way make us drunk. But thanks, Italian man, for looking out for us. We appreciate it.
We ended up going to dinner at the “Jersey Shore” pizza place. The pizza was less than spectacular, but we were there more for the experience than the food. Originally, we had planned to go out on the town that night, but Ivana and I are old women and instead, we ended up watching “Charlotte’s Web” in our room and going to bed around midnight.
Saturday morning, Ivana and I woke up a little early to go to Pisa and Lucca for the day. After a long search for breakfast, we had our pastries and cappuccinos and headed out. On our train to Pisa, a man sitting across from us was wearing a William & Mary shirt and, after hearing us talk, asked us what school we went to. We told him UVa and he said how his daughter is trying to decide between UVa and W&M for college. We spent the next 45 minutes discussing our university. What a small world. Once we got to Pisa, we spent approximately 50 minutes total there. We got another cappuccino, walked across town (10 minutes) to the Leaning Tower, took the obligatory photos, I bought a leaning shot glass, and we were on the train to Lucca. There is nothing in Pisa except the Tower and the city isn’t very pretty. It’s very touristy, small, and probably was my least favorite part of the trip. But at least now I can say I’ve been there.
Lucca, a walled-in Medieval town, is beautiful. We were hungry when we left Pisa, so by time we were in Lucca, we were ready for lunch and not up for sightseeing. We spent over two hours trying to find a place that wasn’t too expensive and looked decent. Neither of us wanted to waste money, or a meal, on bad food. We were getting pretty grouchy when we finally found a place and had some delicious pasta and risotto. Bellies full, we were ready to see the town. We walked for a while, and then decided we wanted to find the palace. After walking past it a few times, not even realizing it, we found out that it was still closed for the season and would open, get ready, the NEXT day. Great timing.
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| We were there on March 31st... |
So, we decided it was gelato time. We took a long route to the front of town, where we had one of the top 3 gelatos of the trip. Then we found some lovely green space, where we stretched out and read our Kindles for a bit. Since it was starting to get breezy, we embraced our tourist status and even though it was about 3pm, we ordered cappuccinos in a café and sat for a while. Then, we got back on the train back to Florence. We weren’t really in the mood for a big dinner, so (of course after searching), we found a bakery. We bought ham and arugula sandwiches and some pastries for the morning, and then stopped at the grocery store to get some Peronis. Once back in our room, we discovered the sandwiches were gross. Again, not wanting to waste a single meal in Italy, we changed back out of our pajamas and went down to a pizza place right below the guesthouse. We got a pizza to share and brought it back to the room to eat with our beer while watching TV.
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