Travel Adventures: Firenze e Pisa

This past weekend after my gardens field trip me, Cassie, Rachal, the Iowa girls, and Mike went to Florence and Pisa. In italian some of the names of their cities are different so instead of calling it Florence they say Firenze. And Pisa is just Pisa. Anyways we took a train after our gardens field trip and it took about 3 and half hours to get there. When we got there we found our hostel right away, it was really easy to find because it was just a few blocks away from the train station, it is apparently known as the best hostel in Italy. It was definitely worth the 19 euros a night we spent on it. It included free breakfast every morning and free tours(which we didn't participate in but they were available to us), and you could vandalize their walls, what more could you ask for? So friday night we went out to dinner, went back to our hostel to meet our other roommate because we had booked a 8 bed room and there was only 7 of us. So our other roommate's name was Daniel and he is from Australia! He was really cool and had left home at 17 and just been working all over Australia and decided to travel the world by himself and has been doing so the past 6 months and won't be back to Australia until September of this year! After we bombarded him with questions and he told us his life story we went out to a pub and just hung out and talked for a while. The next morning we got up and went to the street market and there was just lines and lines of vendors down these streets in Florence it was awesome! I got a lot of good buys for my family! I got something for my mom, my dad, my 3 brothers, my sister Carrie, and my sister in law Morgan! I can't say what I got them all because at least 3 of them will read this blog but I know they are all going to love their presents! After the market we decided to do some sightseeing! We went to see the Duomo in Florence which is their first cathedral called the cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, and for the low cost of 8 euros you could walk up 463 steps to an amazing view of Florence! It was really exhausting but totally worth the end result! After the Duomo we went to the museum where the David by Michelangelo is! Probably the biggest statue I have ever seen in my life!! It was way bigger than what I was expecting! I found it very strange that it was in that museum because all the other art work was not to that scale at all! Everything was way smaller than the David! He definitely is the main attraction there!! And you aren't allowed to get pictures of him but Rachal got 10 because she is awesome! After the David we went to the famous bridge in Florence called the Ponte Vecchio, it is lined with expensive jewelry shops!! Way too expensive to buy, but beautiful to look at! Then that night all 8 of us went to dinner together and then went back to our hostel and played card games, Daniel taught us a game that was pretty much Village Idiot but had a more vulgar name for it! ha! We all made our mark on the walls on our floor that night as well! I wrote the whole crew don't even worry! And a few other things as well! Sunday morning we decided we would go to Pisa which is only an hour away from Florence by train. Basically the only thing to see there is the leaning tower and it is apparently going to fall over so we might have gotten the last pictures of it standing!!! The thing that is very strange about it is that they let people go up it for 15 euros! I decided not to do it because first of all....15 euros?!?!?! For something that is not that tall and is in fact the only thing to see in the city, so if you are on top of it you can't actually see it.... Second of all its going to fall over!!! I did not want to die in Pisa so I stayed on the safe ground! Rachal however is braver than me and not as cheap as me and went to the top! We could see her and call to her and she could still hear us! After she came down we went to get lunch at a cafe and I have to say that I was not impressed with the food in Florence or Pisa!! But the gelato in Florence was pretty good and I had 3 and half helpings of it in one day! I went gelato crazy on saturday!!! haha!! After lunch we headed back to Viterbo on a train that took about 4 and half hours! I got back later than 5 p.m. which is when my mom usually calls me on sundays so they had to wait to call me at 11 p.m. my time but it was great because I got to talk to my dad! Which I haven't heard his voice in 3 weeks I think now so it was really good to talk to him even though he doesn't have a lot to say!!!