Italy: The Top of the Hill and Pisa

Hello, hello, hello! I'm back with more Italia adventures :)

The Friday after we arrived in Florence was pretty uneventful. We  had our orientation for most of the day. It lasted forever and we were all so exhausted! One thing I learned pretty fast over there was that it can be loud! People are always out on the streets and between horns honking, sirens, and people yelling, it can get noisy. I've never really stayed or lived in an apartment that's right in the middle of a city, so it was a bit different. Although Florence isn't really a city like New York, it still got loud! And the thing that made it kind of hard to sleep at night was the fact that we didn't have air conditioning. So, in order to be cool we had to open our windows which in turn made it even louder! But it's okay...that's what iPods are for :)

On Saturday the whole study abroad group took a trip up to the 'top of the hill' that overlooks Florence. It was sooooo beautiful!

We took our first Italian bus ride (woo woo!) from our apartments down in the center of Florence, up to the top of the hill on the outskirts of the town.

Once we got to the top we were immediatly met with the statue of David. No, not the real one. This one was green and just a little weathered.

At the top of the hill there were also a bunch of little vendors selling stuff to awesome tourists like us. I don't think any of us bought anything though, we were too amazed at the view. It was incredible! You could see everything from the Duomo to the Ponte Vecchio bridge, two of the biggest Florence landmarks. It was breathtaking. Unfortunately the little camera I had at the time didn't do it justice...

Some of my favorites :)

After we took thousands of pictures at the top, we had our first gelato!

...And so my obsession began. After this, I don't think there was one day that I went in Italy without getting gelato. Seriously, it might be my favorite thing about Italy. While we ate our gelato, we all sat on some cute steps overlooking Florence, such a typical thing to do in Italy :)

Pretty sure this was stolen from facebook, so sorry for the quality :)

Our next stop at the top of the hill was to one of the many, many churches in Italy. I wish I rememberd the name of it, but of course I don't. Once we climbed up to where the church was we toured around inside and then outside in the cementary. It was so beautiful! (Oh and by the way, my vocabulary isn't very broad, so you'll probably get used to hearing me describe things in Italy as beautiful, amazing, wonderful, etc.)

After we explored some, we decided that instead of taking the bus back to our apartments, we wanted to walk! It really wasn't that far away, only about a 45 minute walk, but for us it took much longer because we stopped and explored, got some dinner, and and took so so so many pictures! That's one of the things that I really miss about Florence, all of the walking. Yes, I'm serious! I love to walk and everything in Florence was pretty much in walking distance for us and it was such a cool atmosphere! People were everywhere and there were all kinds of vendors and markets and food and smells...I loved it! Here's some pictures from our walk back.. :)

Ponte Vecchio

Hello Duomo!

All in all, it was a lovely Saturday in Florence!

On Sunday, we woke up bright and early and headed to PISA!! I was pretty excited to go to Pisa, I mean it's such a big landmark...I've seen so many pictures and I couldn't wait to see it in person (and yes, do the whole touristy picture thing of pretending to hold it up).

It was insane to just walk in and see this thing pop up out of nowhere (so it seemed) looking like it was about to straight up fall over, it was crazy!

When we got there we had lunch at this yummy cafe thing where they gave us some deeeelicious pizza! Another thing I miss about Italy is their pizza, can't find anything like it here.

After lunch we had the rest of the afternoon to wander around the grounds, go into the baptistry, the cathedral, the museum, and take countless pictures!

Inside the baptistry

But unfortunatley, I had some bad luck the Monday after this trip. I somehow managed to delete all, yes all, of my pictures from the trip to Pisa. How did I manage that?! No idea. So that typical touristy picture of me holding up the tower and leaning on the tower? Gone. That's all I really even wanted! Needless to say I was pretty upset on that Monday, it just felt like salt was being rubbed in the wound, one bad thing (losing my wallet) after another (losing pictures). AND THEN, as if I hadn't had enough...I was walking from the computer lab (where I had realized I lost all my pictures) to my history class when a PIGEON POOPED on me! I mean, really?! More salt...

Then someone proceeded to tell me "oh! that's good luck in Italy!" yeah, well, that's not what I wanted to hear at the time. It wasn't good luck, it was just adding to my awful day! But in the end, maybe it was a bit of good luck... because after that rocky beginning in Italy, things started to turn around for me :)


Ciao,
B.Hines