Although we were sad to leave Cinque Terre on such a beautiful day, we were excited for our next stop. Since Pisa is so close to Cinque Terre (about 50 minute drive), we just HAD to stop by on our way to Florence. We were dragging a little that day. We tried to tell ourselves it was because we were constantly on the go everyday for the past week, but let's face it, it's really because we partied a liiiiittle bit too hard the last night in Cinque Terre haha. The quick drive felt like forever since we were both so hungry/tired, but not to worry...look what we found right before we hit Pisa as the perfect pick-me-up:
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| Micky D's!!!! |
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Words can't describe how happy he was to eat some greasy food! lol.
(And just FYI, McDonald's is actually really good in Europe) |
After getting some food in our bellies, it was time to see the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa!! You know you see it in pictures and think you're prepared for what you'll see and then all of the sudden you turn the corner and you're right in the middle of the main square in awe.
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| You can see the tower peeking out in the background. |
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| Chase in front of all the souvenir stands. |
This was definitely the most touristy of all the places we went. But we mangaed to push our way through the crowd to get the obligatory "holding up the tower" pictures...we just had to.
Personally, I think mine is much cooler than Chase's, but I was also the one that made him do it - I was really into it haha. He was such a good sport. So we basically just walked around for about an hour taking pictures and buying souvenirs. Here are a few:
Then we got a stranger to take our picture for us:
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| Perfection in a picture. |
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| Yay!! One for the scrapbook :) |
And a couple more:
After seeing all there is to see there, we checked Pisa off of our list and headed to Firenze (Florence)!! Now, you know how I said that the craziest driving I've ever done was through the Alps that first day?? Well I was wrong...the SECOND that we crossed into Florence it was CRAZY!! I mean...there were like hundreds of people on scooters just boppin' around, swarming the car -- I think I only hit about 3 or so the whole time (hehe just kidding...but it was close!). It was also extremely difficult to find our hotel. The address we were given was: "21 Something Rd. (black number)" You might be wondering what the 'black number' in parenthesis means...well we did too! First off, this was on the way to the hotel:
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| Like I said, crazy driving!! |
So we're wondering, where is the hotel? How are we going to park? Where are we?! Made a quick decision to park in a parking garage that we thought was close to our hotel according to the GPS; turns out it was one of those garages where you just hand over your car/keys and they park it in a random underground lot for a million euros a night - but we had already committed so that's where we were parking. We get out with our suitcases and start walking, trying to find the hotel. In the meantime, I about knock over every person trying to pass us on the tiny sidewalk with my large suitcase (I def. learned my lesson about bringing a big suitcase to Italy). So we start looking for our hotel by the street number and it turns out there was NO pattern to the building numbers. We walked down the side walk and the numbers went something like this: 124, 32, 9, 130, 50...makes perfect sense right? NOT! We finally reached number 21; however it was definitely not our hotel...turns out it was 21 (white number) LOL!! We're assuming they are labeled by the color the number is painted on the building. Anyways...after we asked a dozen Italians where to find our hotel and not one of them was able to help...we finally found it after wandering around on our own haha. Since it was already almost 5:00 we checked in quickly and started exploring. Like I said, we had done absolutely no research on Florence, so by explore I mean we decided to walk around until we found something cool. That didn't take very long. We were just walking down the sidewalk until...BAM the most beautiful cathedral I've ever seen.
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| Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (The Duomo) |
How beautiful is that?! It literally took our breath away!! We just stopped in awe and stared for awhile. It's hard to capture in a photo how huge it really is. It's real name is the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Basilica of St. Mary of the Flower) but it's common name is "The Duomo" - that's what cool people call it. We spent most of our time that night just walking around the gigantic cathedral and taking pictures from every angle to try to capture all of it. Here are just a few of the pics I took:
I know I said only a few but I couldn't help it. I think The Duomo might be my favorite building we've seen since we've been in Europe. Here are a few more shots of views around Florence.
After we were done walking around, we grabbed dinner at an awesome little Italian restaurant and headed back to the room. We called it an early night and fell asleep watching the only thing on TV that was in English...Jersey Shore haha! We're pretty sure the only reason it was in English was because the translators couldn't understand what the Jersey Shore cast was even saying!! LOL.
Another solid day in Italy. Next stop: VENICE!!
