Florence and Pisa

Another day, another successful one. Today we headed out of Rome after a wonderful couple of days. We are getting pretty use to the train thing now, so much so that we left until the last 10 mins to arrive at the station or should I say termini :) We jumped on the train heading to Florence, in 1st class and sat back and enjoyed the view. Nicole did some catch up work on the paper Journal and I did some...important ipod work.

We arrived in Florence with ease and even easier to find our new base for a few days. It is in the heart of the action, just down the road from the Duomo. Not quite as big as the church we just saw in Rome, but pretty impressive. The walls of the church were designed to be so impressive that people would say nothing more could have been done to improve them (which as some of our pics might show – it has a lot of intricate detail). The dual dome was put on by another architect so it is a bit different but pretty impressive as it has no support structures.

Speaking of impressive, our room is on the 4th floor.....which is actually the 5th as they call ground floor “0”.....Whatever it is called it is a long way with full packs and sore legs from Rome :) but as normal these holidays we found that little bit extra and made it, and then found the bonus.....air con. That immediately hit 18 degrees :)

We took a few mins to settle in then headed out the door to find lunch and investigate Florence. Taking guidance from previous times, we found the open top bus and did a lap of Florence to get to know it. Like we have said we found this the easiest way to kick start the sightseeing.

This place is amazing. It is like it is out of a painting. The countryside is beautiful, everything is very green. The river is very inviting, to the point of wanting to jump in it, but given that we don’t trust water that isn’t in a sealed bottle – it probably won’t happen. The houses/buildings are so cute. They all are sensational colours and have these shutters on all the windows. Even our place has them.
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That was yesterdays contribution to the blog but we didn’t get a chance to add it.

Today we struggled to get out of the very uncomfortable bed but once up we were on a mission, another lap on the bus to get a better look at Florence and then a train ride out to Pisa.

We are glad we had another look around on the bus because we got to see some more of the beauty that this place has to offer. We hoped off at Michelangelo’s Piazzale which looks over Florence. Unfortunately the day started out a bit hazy so the pics aren’t as good as we would have hoped but you’ll have to trust us that it was truly breathtaking.

We haven’t had time this trip to look at any of the galleries or museums but I’m sure we will be back one day and we will allocate more time to Tuscany.

Next on to the Pisa trip!!! Purpose of the journey – cheesy tourist shots :) and we succeeded!!!
We got the train out to Pisa, about an hour away from Florence and took a guess that we would be able to find the Leaning Tower with easy (ie we didn’t take a map or guide book). Good call by us – the train station and the Tower are at opposite ends of the main city area but it is only a small area which made for a nice walk after we grabbed a bite to eat. (Yes – Pizza again:) )

We both had different expectations of the Tower – Phil thought it would be bigger – Nic thought smaller but in the end we both thought it was great and worth the travel. We got a great laugh watching tourists pose for the “Tower Holding” shots and then we got into the spirit and joined in :)

We took a different route back to the train station and got to see a bit more of the outer city area (more suburban) – although there were a couple of moments we thought we may have made the wrong decision but we got there in the end.

With twenty minutes till the train we decided to find some gelato – and got our best bargin yet – waffle cones with three big scoops of ice cream for 2.50euro each. A great way to cool down.
Anyway now we are back in our hotel room – after discovering we can access the net in here for $0 – another great bargin :)

Tomorrow morning we head off to Venice for a couple of days – which looks like it will be a budget blower! But we are sure it will be worth the $$$.

Oh by the way – the Italian heat has done us both well – both colds are almost gone now.

Hope things are going well back home. We miss everyone heaps but will be back before we all know it (we leave in less than 2 weeks now).

PS GO THE BRONCOS