Europe 2nd Trip - Pisa, Italy (Day 7)

31st Oct 2013, Thursday, Sunny

Snacks given on Train

Today we are going to move out of Rome and head to Pisa to see the leaning tower. We had the same breakfast again and we make sure that we got all our stuffs in our luggage and went to do the check-out. Then we got the hotel staff to help us get a cab to drive us down to the train station. When we reached the train station, we wanted to take the regional train down to Pisa but when we checked the board, the train was delayed. The first we saw is delayed for 15 mins and there wasn't any platform indicated yet. Then the 2nd time we saw the delayed time had jumped up to 20 mins and it wasn't stopping..it went up to 30 mins. In the end, we went for the high speed train instead, which was to go to Florence first, then take the regional train from Florence to Pisa (which was running hourly). So we decided to head for the hotel first to drop our luggage since we were going to Florence first now. It took us about 1 hour plus to reach Florence, so we just rested on the train for the time being. During the ride, when we were about to reach Florence, i got up to unlock our luggage. Then suddenly i heard a commotion behind and heard one of my friends saying 'Oh My God!'. Then i turned around and saw one of my friends had orange juice spilled onto her pants and there was a lady carrying a very big and heavy backpack and she was holding some metal poles/sticks. Apparently, she had lost her balance when the train was moving and had fell on our table and the cup of orange juice was spilled onto my friend. I think she can't really speak English but she kept telling us she was sorry....hohohoho..Luckily, we were heading to Florence hotel first, at least my friend can have a change of pants before heading to Pisa. Hahahhaa....We also made fun of her by saying she had become orange-flavoured after the spill too.

Main Entrance of the Hotel Building

Once we arrived in Florence, we headed out to take a cab to go the hotel. Once we reached the hotel building, the building lift was also the same as the one in Rome - with cage, just that the spring door wasn't springing in Florence.....hahhaa...as usual, we need to go up 1 by 1 cos the lift was too small for the 3 of us plus luggage. The hotel we booked was Hotel Europa, it was a nice comfy hotel and it is a family-run hotel. The hotel owner gave us our key and showed us our room, which was at the 2nd level (need to climb a small staircase up). She even helped us to carry my friends' luggage up, i carried mine up myself (think she was also panting carrying both my friends' ones..their are bigger size and more heavier). The room was really big for the 3 of us, the biggest room we had so far. There was a walkway towards the toilet, then on the right side was the room with 2 beds (1 single and 1 double). And the window was made of wood. After we settled everything, we headed out for lunch and to take the next train to Pisa.

Mango Gelato (From La Bottega del Gelato)

We walked to a self-service restaurant, called Self Service Leonardo. The place was like a canteen where you pick the food you want and pay at the cashier. So we got our lunch there and eat, it was ok. The drumstick we got was a bit dry and i still find the food salty. After the lunch, we headed down to the train station by walking and took a train to Pisa, which was about an hour journey. We reached Pisa at around 3 plus, then we started the self-guided walk by Rick Steve's book (as the starting point was from the main train station). So we just followed and walked towards the leaning tower of Pisa. Along the way, there were much to see and even managed to get ourselves a nice gelato from La Bottega del Gelato, just after we crossed the bridge over Arno River. (I had read about it on the web when doing the research, i wanted to try it). Both my friends got 2 flavours on 1 cone and i only got 1 flavour on top, which was mango (I love mango..^_^). It was really really nice...If you are going to Pisa, don't miss this gelato shop. You will not regret it. And it only costs euro $1.50 for the small cone, if i remember correctly, this applies to 2 flavours too, as long as it is on the small cone. I enjoyed the gelato very much and we continued our way while eating. Basically the walk took us 30 mins to reach the fields of Miracles where the Duomo, Campanile, Baptistry and the Campo Santo stood. Actually, when we were walking along the road, i didn't even see the top of those buildings (as an indication that we were about to reach). It was like you walked out until the end of the road, then you will see the famous buildings standing just in front of us and you will just like say 'wow' to yourself.

Leaning Tower of Pisa

So we got ourselves snapping photos away on the leaning tower, on the Duomo, on the Bastistry (don't think we saw the Campo Santo cos it was behind the Duomo and we didn't went to the back). Both my friends were trying to make the photos like they were holding the tower, pushing it, picking it up using camera angles. There were a lot of people trying to do the same thing too and we hung around until it was dark (anyway, it was already dark by 5pm plus). Then one of my friends was asking the other friend to help her take photos, i went behind her to make some funny faces (anyway, it was Halloween night today)......hahhaa...think she didn't even realised it till she found the 2 of us was laughing on something. After this, i was dying to look for the restroom, so i went ahead in to find the restroom while both my friends sat at the fountain to wait for me. But the restroom was closed for the day...argh!! No choice, i headed back to find my friends and we decided to go back Florence and have dinner. We walked our way back again and did some souvenir shopping whenever we saw the shops selling souvenirs. I got a collar pin and postcards for myself, my friend got t-shirts for her niece and nephew and another 1 got a cute pinocchio puppet which costs like euro $11. The shop uncle was showing us on how to operate the puppet, it was so cute. He controlled the puppet so well that the puppet was alive itself. He used the puppet to walk and even to kiss him on his check. After all the shopping, we walked down to see whether we can find any tobacco shop opened so as to buy bus tickets. It took us a distance to find 1 that was still open and once we got our bus tickets, there was no bus coming!! So we waited at the bus stop for like half an hour or more than that.....saw some kids dressed up for Halloween too and were running around the streets to have fun (but it wasn't what i expected. I thought it would be a big event and a lot of people would be outside the streets to celebrate). It was quite quiet that night....hahaha....

Finally the bus came and we boarded to head back to the train station. We got on the 7 pm plus train and reached Florence at about 8 plus. By then, we were all tired, so we got ourselves some snacks and headed to McDonald's to grab a fast dinner....The chicken nuggets there were much tender than Singapore and they were not dried. Then we ended up walking back to the hotel to rest for the day.

Hotel Stayed:

Hotel Europa, Florence

Places Saw:

Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II

Corso Italia (where a circa-1960 wall map of Pisa with a steam train was on a wall of a bar)

Ponte di Mezzo (Bridge that we crossed over Arno River)

Piazza Garibaldi (Where the gelato shop was located)

Borgo Stretto (Pisa' main shopping street)

Piazza delle Vettivaglie (Pisa's historic market square)

Leaning Tower of Pisa (Campanile)

Duomo, Pisa

Batisery, Pisa