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This is going to be a long one since I'm smushing so much travel into one!
Our second weekend was our first group trip to Pisa, Florence and Tuscany. We had to wake up super early (7 am) and we all got on a bus and drove 5 hours to Pisa. I was still exhausted from Tiesto so I slept the whole way and even when we got there I was still pretty out of it, but feeling more awake than I had. When we first got there, we met up with our tour guide and walked around the church, basilica, and the leaning tower. I learned that the reason that the tower leans is because this area used to be the coast of Italy, and it eventually expanded but when they built the tower, it had very fluvial soils (sandy soils) so the soil was not strong, and therefore the tower leaned. It started to lean an inch more each year until experts from everywhere came and tried to combat the leaning and tried multiple ways until they finally were able to slow it and it's predicted that it should hold for another 200 years. Pretty interesting The tour lasted only an hour and we had 4 hours left in Pisa which was kind of a bummer since Pisa is really only known for it's leaning tower. However, me, kyle, trista, caroline, ashlee, kelly, fran and carrie walked farther down to try and get away from the more touristy restaurants and eventually sat down at one and I ordered ravioli which was quite good. Afterwards, me, kyle, caroline and ashlee wanted to wander around the town so we left everyone else and explored. We walked past some trendy shops and some streets that were really pretty and evetually got to the center that had the river running through (same river that runs through Florence). It was so pretty! After walking around for awhile we decided to go back. I was pretty happy with my decision to explore the town a bit because the rest of the group just ate and then sat on the grass for 4 hours and complained about how bored they were the whole time haha. Eventually time came to leave and we all hopped on the bus and drove about an hour and a half to our hotel that was 45 min outside of Florence.
Once we got to our hotel we had dinner that was paid for in our trip fee. It was my first 4 course meal that I had on the trip but it was only mediocre. We first had pasta, then salad then our main course of ham (tasted like spam) and fries (??) and then tiramisu which was actually good. Maybe the hotel thought since there was 100 of us, they really didn't care what they fed us haha. After that our whole group (msu) walked into the town which was super pretty and had lights hanging from building to buildng in their town center. We eventually found this open bar which was really nice except for the fact that we had to pay to sit down at a table so we all just sat at the bar. It was a really good time with everyone, and on the way home me and some people rode a carousel that was still open! It was hilarious, I felt like a little kid again. The next day we had our complimentary continental breakfast that was also mediocre and consisted of meats, cheeses, breads, criossants and warm milk. I just kinda stuffed food into my mouth since we had to leave pretty early. After breakfast we hopped on the bus and drove 45 min to Florence.
First of all, I love Florence. So much more than Rome. While Rome has amazing history, and amazing old roman buildings, I love the calmer atmosphere of Florence and it's not as crowded and polluted as Rome. I also wish we would've spent more time there than just one day. There's so much to do there! When we first got off the bus, we met our tour guide who took us all around Florence showing us the Medici family houses/buildings, Galileo's residency, where Leonardo da Vinci started painting the Mona Lisa, and the famous church and bell tower that Florence is known for. Our tour guide also showed us where Jershey Shore was known to be working at this pizzeria . After the tour we were all dying to see if we could catch a glimpse of them so we went looking for the pizzeria but after 5 min of not being able to find it, we left. After, we split up in our groups and went out to lunch. A bunch of us found this one restaurant (i'm getting so good at being able to tell good restaurants from bad ones at first glance!) and I got gnocchi and mozzarella which was really good. After our delicious lunch, we went to the leather markets our tour guide showed us and I was in love. I couldn't believe this was real italian leather for so much cheaper than you would find in the U.S.! I definitely took advantage of being in Florence and got some good gifts :) After awhile of shopping, Tom was meeting people to climb the dome of the church. All 500 and something steps. Even though I had done it before and it was 8 euros, I definitely thought it was worth it. The 500 steps are super enclosed, straight up and make you feel like you're in a dungeon. Wouldn't recommend it to people who are clausterphobic haha. But the climb was worth it because the view was AMAZING. And there was a good breeze that made it feel even better being up there. This blog photo is me at the top. After a group photo that an asian took and you couldn't see any background to see where we were, we made the climb back down (a lot easier than going up). After, I went back to the leather market just to look around. A couple girls I was with got seperated from me and decided to go looking for the Jershey Shore again and they FOUND IT! They even ordered pizza from them! I was so mad, I almost felt like my trip in Florence was a bust haha. I was super jealous to say the least. Oh well, I can still say I was in Florence when they were filming . I eventually made it back to where we were all meeting and then we hopped back on the bus and went back to our hotel. After, I layed down because my feet were killing me and then I went to dinner and our main course was a little bit more normal (chicken and potatoes), the chicken was super dry but the potatoes were pretty good. I would've expected something better out of this hotel. Afterwards, the group left again and we ended up going to the same outdoor bar and hanging out until it was late and we were all exhausted from the day. We had to wake up early again because the next day we were leaving the hotel and going to the countryside in Tuscany!
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