Firenze

The weekend after Pisa, my mom and I took the train to Florence and met our friend, Kathy Schneider there. We took the fast train from Rome, which only takes 1.5 hours, as opposed to the slow train, which takes 3 hours! We arrived early evening and after dropping our bags off at the hotel, we set-out to find a restaurant recommended by their travel agent. We had some difficulties in finding the restaurant, but eventually found our way.  The restaurant was good food, but certainly a tourist trap.  The prices were a lot higher than what i'm used to paying and all of the waiters spoke English and acted like American waiters.  They were very attentive and brought out our food quickly.  This is NOT the way that typical waiters are in Italy. We started out with some burrata...my all-time favorite type of mozzarella in Italy!! We shared a carafe of wine, each had a pasta dish and finished with an apple cake.  Again, all very good, but far too expensive for the quality of food. Since I don't live in the touristy part of Rome, I never find restaurants that are over-priced and touristy.

Saturday, we went on a 7-kilometer hike in the Tuscan countryside in a town called, Fiesole, near Florence.  The weather all week said that it was going to be cold and rainy this weekend. We lucked out and the rain held out while we were on our hike.  We saw the places in the woods where Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo practiced their artwork. We hiked up to the top of a mountain where we saw spectacular views of Florence. We went to Villa Maiano, where the Pazzi and Medici families once lived.  It was there that we had a delicious lunch with different meats, cheeses, vegetables, tomato soup and wine. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone visiting Florence!

Saturday afternoon, we went to the Academmia, where I finally saw the statue of "David." Everyone tells you how great it is to see in person and they're absolutely right!! It gives you chills to see the size and beauty of this statue. We went to an aperitivo at a bar that was next to our hotel that was recommended to us by our tour guide, Jessica.  This bar had the best aperitivo buffet i've seen in Italy yet and at the cost of 8.50euros for a drink and unlimited food, it was well worth it!!

Sunday, we were up and out early again as we had a 3-hour walking tour around the city of Florence this day. Again, it was supposed to be cold and rainy, but the rain held off for another day. We walked around the town and learned the history of Florence and where the noble families once lived. We went into a few churches and discovered frescoes from thousands of years ago...absolutely fantastic. We also got to see and walk across the famous, Ponte Vecchio (old bridge), which everyone has to see when they go to Florence.

We had reservations at the Uffizzi for Sunday afternoon, but there was a mis-communication from our travel-agent about the time of our reservation and we ended up missing it by an hour...oops! We changed our plans and visited the Medici palace across the Arno River.  The palace is huge!! We saw all of the artwork inside and got to tour some of the bedrooms/ballroom/sitting rooms/etc. We wanted to visit the gardens, but by this afternoon, the rain had finally come.

Replica of David in Palazzo Vecchia

After our tour at the palace, we went to a rooftop bars in the main piazza and had a drink at the top.  It was neat to see views of the Duomo and Santa Maria Novella from the top of this bar. Sunday evening, we went to a restaurant near our hotel in Piazza San Lorenzo that was recommended to me by a lady I teach. The restaurant was small and quaint and had wonderful food!

Our train for Rome left at 10:40am Monday morning, so we were up and out early. I will definitely be going back to visit Florence again in the future as there are still things I didn't get to see that i'd like to. Florence is a wonderful city, but everywhere you walk you find tourists, mostly English speaking people.  All of the workers in the stores, museums, restaurants, etc. speak English as well.  Everytime I would attempt to speak to people in Italian, they responded to me in English.  Florence is full of history and culture, but I feel that it's too touristy and that it lacks the "true-Italian allure" that i've found in other, smaller Italian cities.

Pisa

It's been far too long since my last update.  Life has been crazy busy lately!!

My mom arrived in Italy on October 28th.  After a few flight delays and an upgrade to first-class, she made it here in one piece sans luggage though. It took the airlines 2 days to find and deliver her luggage.  We were supposed to leave for Pisa the afternoon that she arrived, but due to the lost luggage, we left on Sunday afternoon.

I didn't have to work on Monday the 31st or Tuesday the 1st due to what's called a "ponte" weekend in Italy.  "Ponte" means bridge.  Tuesday November 1st was All-Saints day and is a national holiday celebrated here.  Most companies give their employees the Monday before to make it a long-weekend.

We had hoped to take the semi-fast train to Pisa, but that one was cancelled due to the mud slides in Cinqueterre that caused a few tunnels to collapse.  We had to take the 4-hour train; getting around in Italy is never simple! We got in around dinner time, dropped our bags off at the hotel and set-out to explore the city.  We started walking in one direction and found that there were no people around and that the town was quite dead.  We then walked in the other direction and realized that THIS was where all the action was. We found a street lined with street vendors selling hand-made goods (jewelry, trinkets, clothes, shoes, etc). On this street, we stopped at an Enoteca where we had a glass of wine which came with complimentary gourmet snacks and we got to people-watch. We then went on a hunt for a dinner spot and stumbled upon a great trattoria that was full of locals; my favorite kind of restaurant!

Monday, we visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the duomo, the cemetery and Campo dei Miracoli (the park where all these landmarks set). That afternoon, we visited the Blu Museum which had an extensive Picasso exhibit. There was of course plenty of shopping during this day as well. Monday was halloween night.  Italy started celebrating halloween roughly 5 years ago. Their idea of "dressing up" is painting their face or putting on a witch hat; it's quite funny.  We enjoyed seeing all the students dressed-up and out on the town.  We walked and walked and walked searching for a good restaurant to eat at and again, stumbled upon a very cute restaurant on a quiet street.  We both ordered Pici Senesi con zucca e salsiccia (Pici pasta with pumpkin and sausage).  Pici is a pasta that originates in this part of Italy.  I had no idea until I went home and googled it. We were thrilled that we chose to order a dish that was from this region.

We took our time getting up on Tuesday and caught a 10:40am train back to Rome.  We had seen all of the main sites in Pisa and wanted to do some shopping on Via del Corso in Rome and go to an aperitivo in Trastevere that evening.  We didn't have a place in mind where we wanted to go for an aperitivo, so we wandered around until we found one.  Two minutes after we sat down, I looked around the corner and realized that we were next to Andy's favorite restaurant, Carlo Menta.  He ate there all the time when he lived in Rome last year.  We, of course, had to get dinner there in honor of Andy.  The place was packed!!! It is a huge restaurant and the crowds of people kept pouring in.  The food is dirt cheap and the food is definitely good for the price.