So day 2 in italy started with a delightful breakfast at our hotel, grand hotel duomo. The range of things they had was lovely. lots of fruits and hams, some eggs and bacon, with coffee machines, a cool little pancake maker and the obvious cereals, breads and croissants. It set us up for a day in Florence.
From Pisa, Florence is about 1 hour on the train. So we took the familiar walk to the station, again head towards the canal and then its just a straight line from there. We purchased our tickets at a counter [ we made a point of not using a machine so we wouldnt get any thing wrong, this theory didnt work] The tickets were 8Euro each way which wasnt too bad considering the journey was an hour long.
Now heres a funny story [ funny now, not funny AT ALL at the time]. Basically when you buy a ticket in Pisa, maybe the whole of italy, you need to then validate it on these little machines dotted around the station, which are not obvious if you are not looking for them, quite frankly they look like hand sanitizer machines. Anyway we werent aware of this and we got on the train thinking we had a valid ticket for our journey. Turns out we didnt. we nearly got kicked off the train, the conductor was going to charge us a fine, there on the spot of 60 EUR each,Which we didnt have because we were budgeting ourselves. Then when we were trying to explain that i "wasnt trying to be funny or do anything wrong" she quickly replied " YOUR NOT TRYING" and then asked us for ID, which we didnt have because we were so scared of loosing stuff we locked it all away in the safe. looking back now we probably should of taken our driving licence or something but yeah she was mad at us.she went off for a few moments and we were basically crapping our pants thinking she had gone to get the train police or whatever.
She came back and asked for ID again and said i dont know who you are, what you're doing here or anything, you should have ID with you. We apologised 1000 times and by some miracle she only charged us 5EUR each.Even now i have no idea what made her change her mind but she was so angry to begin with.
Moral of the story.... VALIDATE YOUR TICKETS.
[all calm before our little incident. Dress;Primark]
Arriving in Florence we just wanted to get out of the station and get going. We found a map [a guy was selling them for 1euro on the way out ] and we went to explore.
One thing that surprised me about Florence was that everything was so close. Unlike if you go to london you get the tube to one attraction/area to another we literally did the whole day on foot apart from the train to and from Pisa.
The first big attraction we came to was the Cathedral. Florence is very religious i would say and although we didnt go inside any of the buildings they were so beautiful on the outside.
We had a couple of things we wanted to tick off our list. The Golden Bridge and the Piazzale Michelangelo.
To get to them we go lost through the quaint little streets filled with pizzerias,coffee shops and gelato shops shops of dreams.
[taken in; Galleria Dell'Accademia]
We reached the golden bridge quicker than we expected because everything was so close. The Golden Bridge got it name because of all the gold shops and jewellery shops that are there on the bridge its self. It was all very luxurious, Rolex and Cartier amongst some of the brands there.
After the Golden Bridge we walked along the canal towards the Piazzale Michelangelo. we knew getting up the hill was going to be a mission so we had a little rest at a cute little place with a garden and had some more beer, its right at the bottom of the street leading up to the stairs to the Piazzale Michelangelo and it began with the letter R [ really helpful aye?!]
the walk up the steps was a tough one but for the views it was well worth it. it was beautiful, and i could imagine a sun set being breath taking.
We worked up an appetite and made our way back down to find something to eat, and ended up in piazza spirito for a bite to eat, we read online its where all the locals go ad it was really quite and chilled with a guy on a sax in the middle of the square.
We ate in Borgo Santo and it was really yummy. sitting outside was lovely, but you have to pay a cover charge of 2Euro per person.
We headed back to the station and back to Pisa for a freshen up and a dinner.
Florence was lovely, but very busy, alot smaller than i imagined and totally doable on foot. We managed to do it in 20,000 steps according to the fitbit!
I wouldn't go back to Florence but it is beautiful!
ASHLEIGH XX
