Pisa and Florence

This is a continuation of the chronicle of our 2 week trip through Italy and the Mediterranean. If you haven't read the previous Italy posts, you should start with the previous three...

Thursday, May 7th

This was a whirlwind day. From the time we arrived in Pisa until we left Florence was only about 22 hours, and in that time we did a ton...

We jumped on a morning train from Cinque Terre to Florence, which stops in Pisa. The guidebooks give you a few things to do in Pisa, but when it comes down to it, all anybody wants to do is go see the Leaning Tower. Conveniently, they have a city bus that runs between the station and the Plaza of Miracles (where the tower is) every 15 minutes or so. The plaza is a large grassy square that includes the city's main church, an enormous baptistry, and the leaning bell tower. It is actually quite impressive, and would possibly be worth the visit even if the tower were straight, but sadly everything else basically just gets ignored.

At the top, the tower is leaning about 12 feet from where it should be. The builders realized it was starting to lean even during construction, and tried to find ways to straighten it during the construction process. If you look closely, the 4th story is not straight, as the right side is taller than the left. This is even more obvious in the belfry, which looks like it is actually pointed directly upward (unlike the rest which points to the right). In order to redesign and build it to what it is took several hundred years. Obviously none of the great plans worked, and they've done tons of things to try and keep it from toppling ever since. The only thing that has been mildly successful was about a decade ago they started removing soil from the left side, thereby causing the tower to lean back the other way a bit. They think that it is stabilized for now, but secretly I think Jenna and I hope it tumbles sometime in the near future, so we can tell our kids "we saw the Leaning Tower before it fell over".

In total we spent about 90 minutes in Pisa, snapped the obligatory "prop up the tower pictures", and headed off for Florence.

After getting checked in at the hostel in Florence (Plus Florence, which really reminded us of a health club, which was weird), we headed off for the Accademia Museum. We had read everywhere that lines could be really bad at this museum, so we had booked tickets ahead (including payment of the €8 booking fee, when the entrance was only €6.50). When we arrived, there was literally one person in line, so we were very disappointed about that, but got over it relatively soon when we got into the museum.

The Accademia was built for one purpose - to hold Michelangelo's David statue. There are a few other things there, but none of them were really mentionable. Just the David. There is apparently a lot of symbolism in the statue related to the city of Florence during the time it was made, but all that is probably pretty boring. The summary - it is a 17 foot tall naked man that is impressively detailed and deserving of the fame it has received. We were rightfully impressed and very glad we got to see "David".

 You were allowed to take pictures of anything in the museum other that David, but I snapped the above photos "from the hip" when the guard wasn't looking.  Turned out pretty good!

After leaving the museum, we headed through the main square of the city, including the main church (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, nicknamed the Duomo for its large dome). The church was pretty interesting due to the fact that it was made from a mix of white, pink, and green marble, which gave the outside a nice look.

We had prebooked tickets to another museum in town, but we had a little time before we needed to be there. We toured quickly through the church (much less impressive having been in St Peter's 3 days earlier, though the painting under the dome was interesting), and hung around the square for a while.

Florence is supposed to have the best gelato in all of Italy (and since Italy has the best ice cream in the world, supposedly, this would in theory be the best place for ice cream on the planet). As such, we decided that an afternoon treat was in order, and we went to what was supposed to be the best gelato place in town. It definitely lived up to its hype.  Jenna's combo of Strawberry and Coconut turned out to be a big hit.

We next headed down to the Uffizi Gallery - Florence's main museum which holds a lot of apparently important artwork. It was a nice museum, and it does contain the Birth of Venus painting, which is pretty famous.

After the museum we sat for a while on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, which is fairly famous, and listened to a street performer while watching the sun begin to set and waiting for dinner. We ate at a small family run place (where we saw no less than 3 other Rick Steves' books) that was really good and amazingly priced (three courses for €12). Even though we came out stuffed, we still made our way to another gelateria for dessert, arguing that it was okay to have two within a 5 hour span because 1) Florence is supposed to have the best, so we needed to take advantage, 2) 2 scoops only cost €1.50, and 3) the classic "We're on vacation".

We savored our treat while casually strolling back through the main squares to the hotel, where we went to sleep with visions of canals...(to be continued).