Pisa, Florence, and SanGimignano

From Lake Maggiore we stop in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower and Baptismal. What a POS city! The only thing that is there and that it is known for is an engineering failure!!! Haha, would it be as famous if it wasn’t falling? Probably not! Again we had to watch ourselves with all the beggars and gypsies everywhere! We had lunch in a little pizza place and waited around for the bus…really not a lot to see in the shanty town! On to Florence!!!

We get to our hotel in Florence and it’s so cute, it has a nice quad thing going on! We head to the streets as group for some Tuscan cuisine, yum! And it was SO good! Then it’s back to the hotel for some sleep. The next day our schedule is packed! We see the Cathedral, Signoria Square and a visit to Santa Croce Basilica. Later, we enjoyed a panoramic view from Piazzale Michelangelo and then we had some free time. We went into a high quality leather making shop where Ashley bought an authentic, leather, Italian purse! While in Florence we also saw the Statue of David! And I have to say, what a marvelous piece of work! We skipped most of the museum tour to just stare at him, how could you not? The amount of detail and size, spectacular! I felt like I could run my fingers through his hair; that’s how real it looked! Florence was also the place where we decided had the best pizza in Italy! It was a restaurant right behind the leather shop. We just had something normal, cheese and pepperoni or something but it was SO good! Maybe it was the crust and all the ingredients were natural! YUMMY!!! On our last night in Florence Federica took us to this restaurant where the owner would inter act with you. If you ordered something that wasn’t his favorite he would scoff at you, same if you ordered meat well done (that’s not how they do it in Itaila!). He would also make “looks” at the ladies when they danced or if their clothes were a little too revealing :P

in San Gimiganano

While in Tuscany we also take a day trip to a town called San Gimignano (jimmy-yan-oh) and what a cute little town it is! As we walk around Ashley sees a sign for a Torture Museum and says, “I’ve seen enough churches! Let’s go to the Torture Museum!” I laughed and went in. Talk about some sick mother effers back in the day! Glad I didn’t live back then! This town also has the Gelato parlor that was voted best Gelato in Italy…but is was closed for family vacation and renovation, it was December after all. 

Florence in the background