ITALIA: Pisa/Florence

I have no words to explain how amazing my trip to Italy was. I have dreamt of going to Italy for as long as I can remember, and I can hardly believe I just spent nine days there. I have so many things to say and so many memorable stories from this trip, I had to divide my posts according to cities.  Pisa and Florence were the first stops on my Italian adventure.

The day we left there was a nationwide strike in Spain, so we got to the airport with seven hours to spare, anticipating long lines and a possibly delayed flight. To our surprise, our flight was on time and everything went perfectly smoothly (aside from sitting in the airport for so long) and it wasn’t until we were almost landing in Pisa that we had problems. The captain announced we had to land in Genova, two and a half hours from Pisa due to the weather. Long story short, we got to the airport in Sevilla at roughly 2 p.m. Thursday, and my head didn’t touch my pillow in our hostel in Pisa until 5:30 Friday morning. We could have flown to the States and back in the amount of time it took us to get to Pisa, not the best start to the trip.

After getting some rest we went to see the Leaning Tower Friday afternoon and enjoyed our first Italian pizza near the tower for lunch. 

 We hopped on a bus and headed to Florence Friday afternoon and I will say that Florence is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I could not have loved it more. Meri’s friend is studying there so she let us stay with her at her apartment tucked away in the older area of the city. We had our first gelato experience Friday night and went to bed early since we were still so exhausted from the night before.

 First gelato experience. Cookies and Café

 Florence at night

Saturday we did all things touristy and saw the famous David, climbed the Duomo and had a great picnic lunch overlooking the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge in Florence lined with jewelry shops. 

 View of Florence from The Duomo

 Ponte Vecchio

 Picnic lunch

The best pizza I had all week...Gustapizza!

I loved every second of it. I think my favorite part of Florence was sitting on the steps atop the Piazza de Michelangelo watching the sunset over the city. A local woman was playing guitar and singing Italian songs for the crowd and everyone was so happy. To say I was speechless during this time would be an understatement.

Atop Piazza de Michelangelo

We met up with our friends from Sevilla (by accident) on Sunday night and had fun enjoying the crazy Florence nightlife. Monday morning we hit the train station and headed to Cinque Terre, my second favorite place in Italy. (See next post)