9/10 – Day 12: Pisa
This morning, we woke up at a decent hour to catch a train out to Pisa to see some tower. We ate a little leftover pizza for breakfast, got ready, and headed out for the hour-ish train ride up. We didn’t expect to spend too much time in Pisa, as there actually isn’t too much there besides the tower, but somehow, we wound up being there for quite some time…probably 5 hrs.
Not too much to write about here actually…first, we walked around the museum for a little bit before our time slot to go up the tower. Some neat things in here.
Then we climbed up the many stairs up to the top of the tower to get a view of the piazza and the city. We got to see the bell towers pretty up close which was neat…ohh…and were right next to the bell when noon hit, so got scared out of our shoes when that happened! Overall, a neat experience.
When we made it back down on the ground, we tried to take funny pictures with the tower. I really stink at taking pictures like this…so unfortunately, don’t really have any good pics of Norina and the tower. Also…a lot of my pictures of the tower make it look straight…I have no idea why!!
After this, we toured through the cathedral, Baptistry, and Camposanto (a monumental cemetery). The Cathedral had some really impressive sculpting and artwork inside.
Inside of Baptistry, this guys makes some echoing calls for about a minute….we didn’t know that was going to happen…so that was pretty cool!
In the Camposanto, there is some really neat artwork…once of which shows dead people being taken away into heaven or hell which was pretty graphic in some cases.
After we had our fill of the Pisa piazza and all it had to offer, we made our way back to the train station, after taking our final looks at the tower.
An hour or so later, we were in Florence (Firenze) and checked in to our AirBnB. Our host was really kind, and gave us some great eating out tips, which we thankfully followed during our time there.
After we got all cleaned up, we made our way out to dinner to one of the places he suggested, but unfortunately, they were full, as for the most part, only take reservations since it is small, and it seems they only have 2 seating times (7:30 and 9).
So we just yelped a place nearby, and walked right in there. The place didn’t have AC..so it was a bit hot… but ohhh man…our dinner was absolutely delicious! I had the Osso buco, and Norina, a pasta with truffle cream sauce. Both were to die for!!! I can still taste that truffle cream sauce it was so good! What a way to end the day!
9/11 – Day 13: Florence
After a great dinner and sleep the night before, we woke up early this morning to get a jump start on the day. Our first stop was the Piazza Michelangelo, where we could get a nice view of the city (as well as see a replica of the status of David). It was a pretty good climb up a long staircase to get up there, but it was worth it given the view.
From there, we made our way back down, through a rose garden, and then across the river to get to the city center.
We headed towards the Piazza del Duomo to hopefully get into the Cathedral, but by the time we got there the line was already super long. So we went ahead and bought tickets for to see the other sites in the Piazza.
Our first stop was Giotto’s Campanile where we climbed over 400 steps inside the tower to get a view of the rest of the piazza and the city. Unfortunately, the top is all fenced in, so you can’t really get a nice clear view of everything, but it was still pretty good.
We were getting hungry now, so decided to look for a street food stand that our airBnB host had suggested to get some Florentine food. On the way though, we stopped by to see the wild boar statue in the street market, as well as check out the statues in Piazza della Signoria.
It took us a little bit of figuring out, but we finally made our way out to Panini Mondiale to have our lunch. When our host showed me the picture of what to get – Lampredotto – it looked good at a quick glance, so that’s what I went for. Apparently, it’s the fourth and final stomach of the cow…. It..was interesting.. it wasn’t bad…but not really good either. Norina went the safer route and got the Porchetta panini, and wow – was that an amazing choice!! That was an absolutely delicious sandwich!
After lunch, we headed back to the Piazza del Duomo, and into the Baptistry of San Giovanni. Inside of here, there was a very elaborate painting in the ceiling dome, which told several biblical stories…including Adam and Eve, and others we googled while bending our necks back to see.
Our last stop of the afternoon was the Opera Duomo Museum. This had a lot of replicas of famous artwork and sculptures, as well as some original artifacts. It was nice…and air conditioned, but even that couldn’t totally keep us from our tired state. It’s funny…we left Switzerland to try and get away from the rain and clouds… and now we were dying from the sun and heat in Italy – it was totally draining our energy. So after the museum, we made our way back to our place to rest some awhile.
After we were nice and rested, we made our way to a hotel to check out a Last Supper painting that they had in one of their conference rooms. It was interesting to see how different it was from Da Vinci’s rendering.
Then we went back to I’ Brindellone where we made reservations for dinner this time around. On our way though…craziest thing…I hear someone call out “JGo!” I look back, and there’s Craig, my first manager at Nike, there with his wife and friends! What an absolutely crazy coincidence!
Ok…back to dinner…We ordered 2 more Florentine dishes..Ribollita (a Tuscan bread soup) and Bistec Fiorentina. The ribollita was really tasty – and we’d like to see if we can possibly recreate this at all at home…seems simple enough. The steak was 1.1 kg – meant to be split across 2 – but it was pretty rare, so Norina only had a couple bites which were maybe Medium. I took the rest down, but there was also a lot of t-bone and fat, so it wasn’t actually 38 oz of meat. It was tasty, but to me I couldn’t really taste the Florentine difference or the fact that it is made of veal. We topped it off with a puff pastry type dessert, covered in chocolate before calling it a night.
9/12 – Day 14: Firenze
We got another early start today so we wouldn’t have to stand in line under the hot sun for a long time to get into the Cathedral. After we dropped off our luggage at a hotel (bagBnB…check it out), we got to the Cathedral line at 8:35, and we were already a decent ways back in line – there cathedral doors open at 10am. While in line, Norina and I took turns walking around the Piazza while it wasn’t crowded to get a better look at the structures here, so the wait wasn’t too bad.
The inside of the cathedral itself was nice, although I’m not sure it warrants an hour long wait (and even longer as it gets throughout the day). I guess it gets that way since it’s the only free entry place in the Piazza.
Inside of the cathedral, was also the entrance to the Crypt, which requires a ticket. (They really should allow those with tickets to the Crypt to have a separate line/entrance to get into the Cathedral). Anyways, the Crypt was decent…got to see the tombs of a bunch of people.
After we had our fill of the Cathedral and Crypt, we made our way back across the river to get some pizza for lunch – from another recommendation of our host. Found another church along the way to see, which columns make the inside look a lot longer than it really is.
We got to Pizzaria Regine at about 11:45, but it was closed! The sign on the door says open at 11:30. We stood there for a minute, thinking of where to go next, but then thankfully, the cook opened the doors for us! Thank goodness, because, one – we were hungry, and two – it would up being probably the best pizza ever!! We got one with cream truffle and sausage, and another with buffalo mozzarella and a spicy salami. They were to die for!!
After our bellies were nice and full, we walked out to the Boboli Garden. Not sure if it’s because of the time of year or if it’s normally like this…but there was very little garden about this place. There was a lot of green, but no flower. A lot of different sculptures though which was nice. A lot of walking up and down hills, and we were starting to tire out quite a bit again because of the heat and our full stomachs. There was at least a porcelain museum within there, where we got to cool off some.
After resting for a bit in a shady area of the garden, we made our way to the Bardini Garden closeby. This place had a better view of the city, but again, no flowers. But at least here, you could tell all of the places where the flowers should be, but it just wasn’t the right season.
We still had some time before our entry into the Cathedral Dome, so we decided to add in one more stop – the Basilica di San Miniato. Unfortunately, what we didn’t realize until midway there, was that this place was actually up higher than Piazza Michelangelo, and this time, we were going up in the sun. By the time we got up to the church my back was soaked from the walk up and our daybag. It was a good looking church though, with a nice view of the city.
Coming back down was of course much nicer, and as we got close to the Duomo, we still had some time, so stopped by the Church of Santa Croce and finished our leftover pizza outside of there to fuel up before our climb up 400+ more stairs up to the Duomo dome.
After climbing up maybe halfway up the stairs, we were able to walk around just below the dome paintings, and get a really nice up close look at the painting. There is so much detail and lively depictions to the paintings…showing heaven and hell…it’s incredible! Although I find it odd to have such graphic scenes of hell inside of a church… but maybe it’s to discourage the churchgoers from being sinners!
Anyways, after staring at the dome paintings, we continued our way up the staircase and to the outside of the dome! Thankfully, there was not a full height fence here, so we were able to get a nice unobstructed view of the rest of the city and piazza from here. Beautiful sight…and probably would be a great place to watch sunset from as well! We stayed up top for awhile to just enjoy the view and relax.
It was getting to be time to head out of town though, so we made our way down, out to the train station, and caught a train into Bologna to stay in a nice apartment with a loft for the next 2 nights.
Jump to:
Switzerland
Zurich > Lucerne > Zermatt > Thun > Lauterbrunnen
Italy
Milan > Cinque Terre > Florence > Bologna > Venice
The Dating Life of Norina and Jonathan 