Italy Week: Pisa & Florence

I have to be honest, I was pretty darn excited about leaving Milan! Those 2 days were hard. Very hard! Our train from Milan to Pisa was the longest stretch we had between cities, so we saw a lot of gorgeous countryside and caught up on some much needed sleep! Besides the air conditioning going out in our car right about the time the sun came up, it was a nice trip!

We arrived in Pisa, dropped off our suitcases at the “luggage daycare” (praise the Lord for that place!) and immediately found a taxi to take us to the Leaning Tower. We even got there a whopping 30 minutes before our tour time! Easy breezy! Of course the first thing we did was take pictures, then set off to find a restroom before the tour (public bathrooms cost €1 to use in Italy!). Reid had paid our taxi driver the last of his euros, so we went to the ATM to withdraw some more for lunch and the next taxi. (It’s not safe to carry a lot of cash on you, professional pick-pockets are everywhere!) Reid put the card in, entered his PIN, selected the amount, and it said it was unable to complete the request… So he tried again, and then tried my card… neither one would work!!! We stepped aside and let someone else use the machine, and theirs worked. We had no money and no way of contacting our bank (who wasn’t even open yet because of the time difference.) At that point we had to go get in line for our tour, so Reid went to check with the attendant to make sure the paperwork we had with us would suffice… and it’s a good thing he did, because she informed him that backpacks were not allowed inside the Tower! We had to take them to an office clear across a huge courtyard, stand in a line behind about 20 people and make it back to the Tower in about 5 minutes!! My nerves were shot! But, praise the Lord we made it back in time and made the 200-something step climb to the top! Isn’t it beautiful?!

 

Once we finished at the Leaning Tower we had a little over an hour to eat lunch, take a taxi back to the train station, pick up our suitcases and be on our train to Florence. That should have been totally doable since there were restaurants everywhere and the ride back to the station would only take about 10 minutes, but we had NO money!! As we were walking around Pisa trying to figure out what to do and running out of time, Reid saw a Cash Advance sign! Yay!!! After we got the cash, we sprinted back to the taxi stop, and we waited… and waited… After about 30 minutes a taxi showed up, we drove back to the train station, Reid ran to get our suitcases, I ran to get lunch, we met back at our platform and got on the train with about 2 minutes to spare! I’m sure the Italians were probably thinking “Crazy Americans!” Are you tired yet??!!

Things went smoothly for us when we arrived in Florence. We quickly found a taxi, he took us to our apartment (after that experience in Milan we were just a bit leery of being dropped off on the wrong side of town), we met the owner and got settled in. After lots of emailing Reid found out that Home Depot’s database had been hacked and our bank had shut down all of the accounts that were potentially affected. Because we were out of the country they were not able to inform us. It was a MESS. Once again, though, God took care of us and Reid got everything cleared up with the bank. I would really be okay if we never had to go through that terrifying experience again!

The rest of our time in Florence was incredible! Our was apartment only a few hundred yards from the Duomo, we went to the Uffizi museum where I saw my first original Michaelangelo and Da Vinci paintings (aaahh!!), went to the Academia to see David, witnessed an insane rain/wind/hail storm, climbed 414 steps to the top of the bell tower (yikes!), and ate some amazing food! Florence takes a close second place to Venice on the favorites list! How beautiful is this place?? (Move your cursor over the pictures to see comments)

 

 

Week 1 of our Italian adventure was WILD! And what better to start week 2 than going to one of the most historically famous cities in the world, the city that I fell in love with when studying art history in high school… ROMA! When in Rome, did we do as the Romans do? You’ll have to find out tomorrow 🙂