Picking up where my last post on Venice left off, the next morning we all checked out of the hotel and walked back to the bus station, across the bridge. Once there we waited for nearly half an hour before Ian figured out that the coach that we were waiting for had been there the whole time! (In case I haven’t mentioned, Ian was my Marketing professor this semester and he and his wife were our trip couriers, the best couriers ever!!) Apparently the coach didn’t look like the one the company had told Ian to look for and neither he nor the coach driver thought anything of a coach sitting there empty for that long/a huge group of people just standing on the sidewalk for that long. Ah well, we got on the coach eventually! Then it was just a 3 hourish drive to Florence, in Tuscany. We had to stop halfway through at a rest stop, which are way more intense than ours in the States! They have toilets and a café and a place to buy food and it’s all huge! For some reason though, they decided that we don’t need toilet seats in the restrooms in order to go to the bathroom. That’s always interesting to try to work out. It seemed to be like this at half of the places I went to in Italy. Really annoying! We eventually got to the hotel, which was the nicest one of the trip and at first they told us that the rooms weren’t ready for us. About 5 minutes later though they told us that they were and we got to go put our stuff in our rooms rather than have it chilling in a lobby area in the hotel. Although a nice room, it was really funny because there were three of us staying in there and the beds were almost pushed all the way together because there almost wasn’t enough room for all the beds! But they were all singles so we were fine. =) After dropping all of our stuff off, 8 of us headed out together and got some lunch at a restaurant that’s on the way to the center of town. I had some good pasta, but I was so hungry that it didn’t fill me all the way up! After lunch Christine and Mike headed off because they had a date with David and the rest of us headed off to the Duomo. The Duomo is a huge basilica made with beautiful white, green, and redish pink marble, with lots of mosaics. There’s a baptistery in front of it and a huge bell tower to the side. We waited in the fast-moving line to go inside and it was just as cool on the inside as on the outside. And it was Catholic, so I actually really knew what everything was in there and what it was used for and all of that, which was nice after being in England for so long, where most churches are Anglican, but they were originally Catholic, so they just look confusing! After leaving the Duomo, we all got gelato, because I mean, we’re in Italy and we’re hungry, so of course we’re going to get gelato! I got chocolate, which is decidedly my favorite. The guys all headed back to the hotel after that, but Rachel and I chose to walk through the markets surrounding the Duomo and look around. I really wish I had a 100+ euro to spare so I could’ve gotten a leather jacket! Some of them were beautiful! I did buy my first scarf though! It’s cream and really pretty and should look good with lots of stuff. We got our fill of the markets for the day and headed back to the hotel and took advantage of the free internet in the hotel (which is when I wrote the Venice post). Later, Christine, Mike, Rachel, Tim, and I went out to get some dinner and found a nice restaurant. I got a good margarita pizza and we shared the white house wine, which was really good! Probably one of my favorites in Italy. We got gelato on the way back, cookies this time. Thought I’d go for something different. It was quite good. =)
The next day was Easter Sunday, so after breakfast Rachel and I headed back to the Duomo to get good spots for the traditional Explosion of the Cart. It started with a procession of people dressed in medieval clothing, from guards in suits of armour to pages and drummers to nobility. Then the cart came in, pulled by oxen (I think, something of that sort at least). The cart is massive! Then came a random little cart pulled by a donkey and a cart pulled by two women in more peasant-type clothing full of flowers, which they passed out to the crowds. We had to wait awhile while they finished setting up the cart, but entertainment was provided by the drums and trumpets and the flags, who twirled their flags much like guards, but it was really cool! Finally, the cart was ready. A dove on fire (paper of course) flew out of the open doors of the Duomo and ran into the cart, starting the explosion, which went on for a good 15 minutes or so. It was really cool because everything was timed! They went off in layers around the cart (firecrackers and fireworks). Sometimes it literally sounded like a battle was raging, with the screaming fireworks and the staccato-fire ones, which was a bit unnerving (probably because I spend most of my time studying wars!) but overall the Explosion of the Cart was really cool and definitely worth going to see! The guys who orchestrated it were wizards, getting everything to go off when it was supposed to and not before! After the explosions were over, Rachel and I grabbed some pizza at a shop on the piazza, then walked over to the plaza where the fake David is located. We had fun taking pictures of all the statues located in that plaza and got a little happy with all of the lions there (well, they were our mascot at Harlaxton!). Then we walked over to the Ponte Vecchio, which is a bridge with shops along either side and another bridge on top of the shops for the Vecchio family could walk from their palace across the river to wherever they were going without being seen by the commoners. (If you remember, I think I mentioned in my Bath blog that they had a bridge that was modeled after the Ponte Vecchio, just without the second bridge on top of the shop one). Now, the shops on the bridge are all expensive jewelery stores, but it was still fun to walk across it. I did grab some gelato on one end of the bridge (chocolate again, and yes, I was using the I have a cold and the gelato helps my sore throat excuse.) We walked back across the bridge and through the markets around the Duomo again. I bought Allison an awesome gift there. We stopped at the train station and bought tickets for Pisa for the next day, then headed back to the hotel. Christine and Mike were in the room when we got back, so Christine and I watched The Lizzie MacGuire Movie, because we had to watch it before we got to Rome! While Mike and Christine went to mass, I wrote the Venice blog, then Rachel and I went to the Duomo to meet them and go to dinner. Tim and Jim were there too, so all six of us went over to the plaza with the fake David to have dinner on the patio of one of the restaurants there. I had a gnocchi and we split some red house wine, which was all really good! After dinner we walked back to the Duomo and got some gelato at one of the places around there (triple chocolate) and walked back to the hotel.
On Monday, Rachel, Anna, Alana, Betsy, and I took the train to Pisa, where Betsy, Alana, and I were annoyed by some kids the entire way. Once we got to Pisa, we took a bus over to the basilica and bell tower (aka the Leaning Tower of Pisa). The Tower is a lot smaller than we all thought it would be but it was still really cool to see! We spent lots of time taking fun, cheesy, tourist pictures of the tower. We chose not to pay 15 euros to climb it, even though it would have been really cool to do. It was just too much money! They had a little tourist market in the square area, so we walked around that a bit, and some people bought some stuff, then we took the bus back to the train station. We just got some quick food and ate it on some benches outside the station, sitting in the sun. And we took the next train back to Florence. Once back in Florence, Rachel and I went to go to the Archaeology Museum, but once we got there, we found out that it was closed on Mondays! With that option out, we walked back to the wine store I had found by the Duomo on the first day and I bought some wine I had liked and shipped it home (it should be here soon!). We got some gelato (chocolate again) and walked back to the hotel (we didn't really have anything else to do.) At the hotel, we looked up things to do in Rome and how much things cost and when they were open. So it was pretty productive. We went back to the fake David plaza for dinner and I had a really nice gnocchi for dinner. We got more gelato on the way back (stratechella), we sure do love that stuff! and headed back to the hotel. The Italy 1 group was in the hotel that night as well, so I went over and hung out with Lyndsey, Gretchen, Sarah, and Jordan for a bit, which was a lot of fun. And it was nice to see them all one last time before we all went home. (they all live in Wisconsin.) I then had the joy of completely repacking my suitcase, as we were leaving the next afternoon for Rome.
This last day is going to be split into two posts, since I was in two different cities this day. In the morning, Rachel and I stored our stuff in the hotel and headed over to the Archaeology Museum, because it was open today! It was a really cool place! There were tons of Greek, Etruscan (where the word Tuscany comes from, as Mike told us many times), Roman, and Egyptian (mummies!!!!) stuff. Everything from pots to armour to dead people (my morbidity comes out when I say the dead people were my favorite. =] ) We had extra time after we left the museum, so we sat on the Duomo steps for awhile, just watching people, before starting to meander back to the hotel, stopping in Accesorize (definitely love that store!) for a while and browsing and finding a cafe to eat lunch at. The chicken sandwich was really good! We had to wait a bit for the coach to get to the hotel, but once it was there, we got ourselves and all our stuff on it and we were off to Roma! (Roma=Rome, Firenze=Florence, Vinezia=Venice) Oh, gelato count=6 for Florence, 11 for Italy.
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