Italy Group Tour: Florence & Pisa

Florence & Pisa: Part 2 of 2 : 20-21 October 2016

After leaving Venice, we sat on a train for a couple of hours before arriving in Florence, Italy.

Florence was a blast. The city was just a lot of fun, and wasn't overly crowded... Though it was on the verge. When we pulled into Florence's train station, we had to walk to the hotel with everyone and all their bags. That took a solid 40 minutes. 

The architecture in Italy is awesome! I was in an art and architecture class, and learned a lot about the different styles. I probably couldn't tell you much about them today though...

We spent a long time walking around one of the main museums in Florence. I appreciate that there are people who appreciate art, but I'd rather go have gone to have more fun out in the streets of the city.

Like this! Finding this random shop with Pinocchio was way more memorable than some century old paintings. It wasn't until we saw this, that I realized Pinocchio is Italian! 

Here are a few pictures from our stroll around the city. 

Pisa!

After looking at Google maps the weeks leading up to our trip to Italy, I found that Pisa was only an hour away from Florence. We decided to sneak away from the group the morning of our second day in Florence to catch up with the leaning tower of Pisa. How could the travel agents not have included that in the itinerary when it's such an easy add in!? We got there, and walked through the little town of Pisa to the tower. There are signs everywhere since the tower is the only reason that people go there. The weather was perfect and we got some pretty good pictures. It's hard to be original with something so photographed.

After about an hour around the tower, we hopped on the train to go back to Florence. The train we got on was the wrong one and we went an hour in the wrong direction before realizing. It was the end of the line, so we just had to stay on and ride it back through Pisa and on to Florence. It was fun to sit and talk though, and it was a good break from all the walking of the past couple days.

Back to Florence

This is not the real David statue. This is just a replica that they have in the main square in Florence. You could pay to go see the real statue, and some people told us that it is a must because the real one is just SO much better than the fake one. meh.. for 10 dollars a piece or whatever it was to go see it, we figured it wasn't really worth it.

 

What we did find worth while was going to a Leonardo DaVinci museum which housed replica hands-on contraptions of many of his inventions. Like this one... the first Bow-flex.

Cindy put me in charge of finding a place for a group dinner, so we ended up just walking into a good looking small Italian restaurant earlier in the day, and talking to the owner. It was awesome. The guy was as stereotypically Italian as you can get. To make things easier, we made a set menu for everyone. Three different dishes, and drinks. It was no coincidence that right next door to the restaurant was the #1 rated Gelato joint in the city.  

That is the end of our Group trip to Italy. It was a blast, and a good break from classes. Here is Carli with Leylah at the train station right before boarding out 10 hour night train back to Vienna. It's not the end of our time in Italy. We had to come back for Rome.

Italy Group Tour: Venice

Venice: Part 1 of 2 : 18-19 October 2016

At the Milan Train station late at night after arriving on our flight from Zaragoza, Spain. Our bed and breakfast was a 10 minute walk from the train station and that's where we went to get a few hours sleep before having to catch the 7:30 AM train from Milan to Venice.

We arrived in Venice about twenty minutes after the rest of the Study Abroad students who were on an overnight train from Vienna. They were already long gone from the train station and we had to find our way to the hotel on our own. Our phones didn't have data, so we couldn't use Google Maps to get us there. We just had screenshots. Venice isn't very big, but it is very easy to get lost and turned around! This nice Italian guy helped us out. We were on the wrong island. That's not saying much though, because Venice is composed of 118 seperate islands connected by about 400 footbridges.

In the end, it was Carli who found our way to where we needed to be!

After dropping off our bags, it was off to explore!

We spent most of the first day there with Will and Mariah Allen, and got lost numerous times. We hit a dead end right onto the main canal and tried to Hail a water taxi. Lucky he couldn't come up to us there, because we found out later that water taxis there are ridiculously expensive. 

St. Mark's Square in Venice was a little bit flooded when we were there.

When the floods come, they set up these elevated walk ways all over the city for people to walk on. Or if you're Will, you can just cary your wife through the water like a champ.

Cindy Brewer being adventurous with the pigeons. 

You can't go to Venice without going on a Gondola ride!

I'm pretty sure our guy's name was Stefano. He's been driving gondolas since he was 18 years old!

We woke up very early on day 2 in order to make it to St. Marks square for sunrise. We had to run there as waking up was hard, but we made it!

It was awesome to be up before all the crowds of tourists and before all the shops opened up. We really got to experience Venice for what it is and not for what people have turned it into. Our Gondola driver, Stefano, told us that Venice is not the same as it once was. It has been turned into Disneyland. By beating the crowds out the door, we were able to walk down streets without being haggled by shopkeepers, or restaurants.

Our hostel hat a complementary breakfast. We had to walk 10 minutes to a little cafe where they gave us a croissant and a glass of juice.

A lot of Venice is actually pretty run down. Repairs and renovations are incredibly expensive. Everything has to be brought in on barges. Just like this boom truck.

We went for lunch with the Allens. At one point during the trip, we sat down at a restaurant and just wanted pasta, or pizza. We didn't want anything to drink from the restaurant because it's expensive. The waiter refused to serve us if we didn't get something to drink. "No drink service.. no food service." So we got up and left.

On day 2 in Venice, we took a boat ride out to the island of Murano. Murano is famous for their glass production. When the palace of Versailles (France) was built, they bought all the mirrors for the palace from Murano because they knew the secrets to mirror making. The mirrors were a display of great wealth and power.
This little church here was on a little island that is used as the cemetery. The church is often completely flooded. 

The tour guide said that bridge back there was famous...

Carli kept begging me for a selfie stick, but I can't bring myself to be the owner of a selfie stick... Even if we did get a cool picture on the gondola with our friend's.

There are artists all over Europe that sell their art on the street. Some of them are fake, selling prints. Some of them, however, are real! Like this painting we got from a lady on the grand canal in Venice.

In the evening on day two, we left Venice and got on a train to Florence.