So three days after getting home from Berlin, I was boarding a plane to Italy, Pisa to be exact. I mean, when in Europe I may as well see everything I can, right? And I was going with my two best traveling buddies Jae Han and Brendan Coady!
Italy had been on our radar for a few months, but it was a bit too far to reach by train or car and flights were expensive. Then one day Jae found a deal on Ryanair for 8 Euros each way from Nürnberg airport to Pisa. By the time we booked, the price had gone up a bit, but was still super cheap! The plan was to arrive Thursday in Pisa, make our way to Florence and back and fly home on Sunday afternoon.
I let Brendan do the planning for the trip since he had been to Italy on a high school trip. He also had a friend who was living in Florence for eight months who could show us around.
It was only a three day work week, but it seemed really slow. Finally, Thursday finished and I met Brendan and Jae at the airport. Inter-Eurozone flights are so simple! Security was a breeze and there was no line up. Ryanair is pretty cheap and they pack as many seats as they can into the Boeing 737, so I felt a bit cramped. Jae was ok though. It was only 1.3 hours which went by fast.
After landing, we were able to walk to our hostel (Pisa is not very big). That was an interesting night, I wish I had had a better sleep but it was a bed for only 8€ so I couldn't complain. The shower was a bit of an adventure though :(
We got up early on Friday to get to the Tower of Pisa before all of the tourists crowded in. We snapped some classic pics and went to the ticket office to see how much it was to go up the tower. The damage was 18€, but we went for it. How many times will we have a chance to climb the leaning tower of Pisa? Well, two if you are Brendan Coady!
After getting a bit lost in the big city, we found our hostel which was only a stones throw from the Duomo, a huge cathedral in Florence. We checked in and then asked the manager for a recommendation of a good pizza place in the area. He said the Clubhouse was nice. And oh man, it was good!
Then we had some gelato, the first round of many!
We looked around the Duomo, quite an amazing building if you ask me! It was the first cathedral I had seen that had a coloured exterior. The inside was really nice too.
Brendan messaged his friend Lindsay and she met us and took us to, in her opinion, the best gelato shop in the city.. and it was pretty good. Then we went for some more pizza. I was so full after that, but it was all I imagined it to be :) We also climbed up a hill to get a good view of the city:
Since Friday was filled with pizza, Saturday was going to be the pasta-and-so-much-more day! We got up early, hoping to beat the tourists to the Uffizi art gallery, but the line wasn't moving at all, so we bailed. We agreed that it was better to enjoy the great weather than to be inside anyway. We checked out the San Lorenzo market and Brendan negotiated like a pro to get us some nice scarves and ties at one of the vendors. We had pasta for lunch at a place called Za-Za's which was really nice.
We had gelato number 3 of the weekend and a place we stumbled upon. I think it was better than the first two, and the server heaped the stuff in the cup instead of only just filling it to the rim. We liked it so much we went back later in the day for number 4!
We met up with Lindsay again and she showed us her art studio where she had been in show the previous Thursday. In my opinion, art is a million times better when the artist is there to explain! Her studio was definitely a highlight of the trip, and she showed us her classmates' pieces as well. Super cool.
For supper we wanted to experience the best of Florence so we went to a restaurant called La Madia and ordered spaghetti and the bistecka Firenze and the house wine. This was all really good, but totalled to be a bit more than we had thought. I don't want to talk about it. But the food was fantastic! Here's the slab of meat that we got
Sunday we got up early to catch the train back to Pisa. We walked past our favourite gelato place hoping for another taste, but it wasn't open yet :(
The flight home was uneventful, though we were all pretty tired. One thing that was funny at the Pisa airport was when we lined up at the gate and then boarded a bus to take us to our plane. We thought it was taking us a few kilometres away, maybe to a different terminal. But then it stopped less than fifty meters from the terminal and let us out at the plane we could all see from the terminal!
To top off the weekend, we flew over the Alps and could see the mountain tops peeking through the clouds! Jae said that this view made the plane ride worth it, even if we hadn't gone to Italy!
So that was a pretty sweet weekend, during which the three of us mastered the "power nap" so we could maximize our day and night times :) Ask Brendan about this if you get a chance!
At the moment, we have returned from co-op and are in our first week back at school. I would still like to write about our trip to Amsterdam, but it could be a week. Stay tuned!
Thanks for reading!
Peter
Note: "at the moment" is a phrase that Germans speaking English use all the time! At first I resisted using it, but now I like the sound of it.. though it looks weird written down.
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