finishing up in florence.

I am now on the train on the way to Rome...and so I figure I should probably finish up talking about Florence before any adventures in Rome commence. Here goes.

Day 3 in Florence:

  

After breakfast, we headed back to the train station--and took a train to Pisa. Guess what we saw there?

me in front of the tower of pisa.

 It was hard to believe I was actually at the Tower of Pisa. I mean, I've seen this tower in books my entire life. We had to walk for about twenty minutes from the train station to get to the tower, and so I was just kind of like la-dee-da-dee-da...and then BAM, it was right there. Quite incredible, really, that it's still there, especially considering that it's been leaning like this for centuries.

Of course, we had to take cheesy tourist pictures.

 As we were going to Pisa, we met four really nice Asians. They didn't know what they were doing in the train station, but wanted to get to Pisa, so they just followed us there. They were really funny people--basically, they'd come ahead of their tour group on accident so they were just kind of wandering around hoping they were going the right way. 

us with two of our asian friends.

We left Pisa at around 11:30 to head back to Florence. As soon as we got back, we headed back to the indoor market to the same restaurant where we had eaten before. This time, instead of getting a sandwich, we got a bowl of pasta. It was cheap, extremely tasty, and very filling. I was stuffed afterward.

lunch. pasta. yum.

After eating, we walked around Florence for a bit and looked in a few stores to kill time until we could go to the Uffizi Museum--one of the greatest art museums in Europe. Finally, it was time. We had reservations so we skipped the huge line and headed straight in.

so excited to see some amazing art.

The museum was incredible. Italian art has a totally different feel than Spanish art, but I like it a lot. It's lighter, brighter, more defined. I loved the expression and vitality in the subjects. The paintings had such perspective and depth. I also thought it was interesting to see the ideas of the Renaissance come out through the art, especially humanism. Although there was a huge amount of religiously themed artwork, I also saw a big counter movement toward Greek mythology--something that would have never happened during the Middle Ages. Although some of the artwork was very ornate, others were much more simple--with care taken to make every line and detail have some kind of meaning and significance. The Uffizi was definitely worth the money we paid. 

 Our feet hurt so bad by the time we left the museum that we just had to buy gelato, claro. We then walked to the straw market, but didn't buy anything because everything was so expensive. However, we did find the wild boar fountain.

rubbing the wild boar's snout.

We rubbed his snout for good luck and dropped a coin in the fountain to ensure a return visit to Florence.

 We did some more walking around and just looking in stores, but I didn't buy anything...mostly because I have no money, but also because I don't want to lug it around.

 Then we decided it was dinnertime. We were crazing pizza so we found a little hole-in-the-wall pizzeria. We split a delicious pizza with tomato sauce, cheese, grilled vegetables, and artichokes. So so good. Our first pizza in Italy.

After dinner, it was a little after eight, and we decided to just return to our hostel and rest our feet and try to resolve our London hostel situation. I talked to Jon for a bit, everything got fixed, and then I went to bed. Good day.

  

And now we're on our way to Rome!