Italy...the good times

So for spring break Annelise and I packed out bags and headed for the sunny sights of ltaly. Annelise and I, along with another guy Tom, headed to Florence to visit my friend Lizzie who was studying there. We flew into Piza and took a train to Florence. Landing in Pisa was a little bit of a cultural shock. It was the first time people didn’t speak English as my the first language, and more importantly, it was hot and sunny. We had a little difficulty figuring out how to get from Pisa to Florence. We were told to take a train from the airport to Florence, but um there was none that we could find. We went up the window and asked the man how to get to Florence. He said sure, two tickets to Firenze. To which we replied no we need to get to Florence. Right, Firenze, 12 euro please. We coughed up the money even though we had no idea what was going on. We asked where to go and he simply pointed to the other side of th airport and said “ok ciao ciao.” I tried to ask what time the train left but he simply said, “ciao, ciao!” and beckoned the next person forward. We eventually made it onto the train and into Florence. Total time of travel: 9 hours. Total time of loving to travel: none. Once into Florence Lizzie met us at the train station. And walked us to her beautiful apartment. Seriously, beautiful. She lived right next to this famous bridge called the Pont de Vecchio. There wasn’t enough room for Tom to stay in Lizzie’s flat so he had to stay at a hostel. Now most people would write down their hostel information…well Tom did not, no number, address or directions…Tom wasn’t the most travel savvy person as Annelise and I learned through out the trip. But we figured it out and all went to bed. Our first day in Florence Lizzie showed us all around. We saw the Duomo, the U’Fitzi, and ate lots and lots of gelato, yum. Italy wins hands down for the best food (and wine…) We walked around and shopped. And shopped. Italy has these really fun markets where they sell everything from clothes and jewelry to disco balls. I know…who buys disco balls in 2009? I ended up falling in love with a leather bag at one stand and bought it as an early birthday present to myself…among lots of other early birthday presents. Annelise and I would often go shopping and invite Tom along, to which he kindly refused and Annelise and I were able to spend quality girl time together. We went to this one café which looked really cute. We couldn’t really understand the menu so I just ordered a lemonade and Annelise ordered a coffee. When we got the bill, we saw the total was 14.50 euro. I kindly told the waiter this wasn’t our bill, but oh yes it was. My lemonade was 6.50, Annelise’s coffee was 4.00 and the chager to sit in? 4 euro. So yep my lemonade was 8.50….that’s like 11 dollars for a lemonade, and it wasn’t even alcoholic! What is that?? Besides that we had few hitches in Florence. When we decided to go to Venice, we bought tickets for 37 euro (one way) and the ticket saleswoman said there was standing room only left. Great. 45 dollars to stand/sit on the floor for 3 hours…sweet. But Venice turned out to be worth it. It was gorgeous with the rivers and boats and little streets. There wasn’t much to see there but it was just a cool place to be. We wandered around, ate pizza and basked in the sun. That night we decided to go to a really cool bar that had a Beatles cover band playing. We had a lot of fun bopping to the music and singing along with our obnoxious American accents. However, we stayed out late and paid for it the next morning when we went to Sienna and did not really feel up to walking the many hills Sienna had to offer. We had this map which showed us cool places to visit. So we followed the recommended roads on sort of a trail and at one point the map told us to go down this hill. When I say hill I mean shear cliff, or so it seemed after 4 hours of sleep and a minor hangover. Annelise turned to me halfway down the hill and said, “I feel like we are going to have to go up this steep incline when we get to the next road.” Little surprise, she was right. Although going up, I swear it was twice as steep. Note to self: do not go down a large incline road, simply say no. When we go to the site it was closed. Of course. It was a church and it was not even that cool. Awesome. After Sienna we only had one more day in Italy, which we spent going to the U’Fitzi. It seemed like a good idea to be all cultured. Now for what reason I thought I would enjoy a museum is lost on me but we decided to give it a try. Well we stood in line for two and a half hours. No joke. And once we got inside we really had no idea what we were looking at. All that seemed to be there was marble statues with lots of male genitalia, and the same religious art over and over again. So Annelise made it through that museum in about 35 minutes. We were laughing the whole way through questioning what in heck we were thinking. Needless to say we grabbed some 1 euro boxed wine on the way home to try to erase the memory of the wasted day. We did love Florence though, it was a very cute town with lots to do (okay mostly shopping) and great food, but it was time to go to Rome. We had been in Florence for about a week, and although we were excited for Rome, we sort of wanted to stay in Florence or go back to Scotland. We were homesick for the land of green!