Pisa, Florence and Venice... Oh My!

Three major Italian tourist cities in one day is not a task for the slight of heart. We started out in Pisa in the morning, and caught a train to Florence. In Florence, Nicole and Brenda spent the day exploring the Uffizi Museum, while Brooke and I instead opted to, again, pay to climb the steps of the Duomo and shop around the food markets of Florence. As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are some shots to give a glimpse of Florence.

The real David is actually located in a museum in Florence, but due to time constraints, we opted to pose near the David replica, which in my uneducated opinion of art is just as good, better actually, because it is free.

The Duomo is a very famous cathedral in Florence (it is the Cathedral Lucy\Sandra Bullock wanted to visit in While You Were Sleeping) and is huge. The dome is covered in a huge painting depicting the last judgment, and was very gruesome. The dome itself is huge and was built without a wooden sub-structure and is the largest masonry dome in the world.

We definitely had fun posing in the stairway... Cosmo here we come.

After ascending the Duomo, Brooke and I head out to find a grocery store. On a side note, the best people to ask directions in a foreign country turns out to be money changers. First, they speak very good English, and second, they have very little bias in telling us where the best restaurants, shopping areas or supermarkets are. After a bit of a goose hunt, we were able to find the Florence food markets. This was a huge building filled with individual food vendors, selling a myriad of foods. The first level was mainly meats. In Italy you can buy many varieties of meats, some more gruesome than others.

My personal favorite was the entire rooster with feathers, sick, and the pig leg, with hoof still attached.

On the upper level of the market was every type of fruit and vegetable imaginable. Brooke and I shopped around getting the best deals and purchasing a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Our final purchase was that of a huge watermelon half. A little Italian woman tried unsuccessfully to sell us a 7 kg watermelon (granted she was going to give us a deal, but seriously, how we would eat it is beyond me) and we eventually conceded to buy a piece nearly as large that was slightly more manageable.

This was my favorite dried fruit stand. So tasty.

After a slight mix-up with train stations and tickets, we got our tickets to Venice and enjoyed a marvelous feast of fruits and vegetables in the train station. Once we had finished our lunch, we left for Venice, because Brooke and I were less interested in the various museums and cultural pleasantries Florence had to offer, we opted to leave early for Venice and get accommodation's figured out before Nicole and Brenda arrived later in the evening. As luck would have it, July 14th was the Feast and Regatta of the Redeemer, which translated into English meant a huge party, chock full of fireworks, tons of tourists and sky high accommodation's. For over an hour Brooke and I unsuccessfully gained information on local hotels, none of which were below €40 each. Eventually we opted to stay just outside of the city in a gem of a one star hotel dubbed 'Johnny's' (personally I think the one star was a bit generous, but hey, it's just me).

Johnny's, the fab villa above a gas station. A bit dodgy, but cheap at only €20 each.

Even with the sky high prices however, Venice is amazing. Picturesque houses line the canals, and it is remarkably quiet, even with the hoards of people for the festival, because there are no cars.

After dropping our bags at Johnny's we headed back into Venice to see the festival fireworks and experience the masses of people. Even with all the people, Venice is fabulous. Built on a number of small islands, transportation is done either by foot or boat in the various canals connecting the city.

Here we are on our first boat/bus ride in Venice. See how I have embraced European fashion trends?

It was wild as there are no cars and instead of buses, they have barges and smaller 'taxi' boats. Because we arrived late in the evening, we enjoyed our boat ride to St. Mark's square, followed by a gondola ride throughout the canals of Venice.

Side note, when bargaining for a gondola ride take note- if your gondolier is angry about the price he will not give you as long a ride, and will be quite grumpy... I may be speaking from experience.

After our gondola ride, we booked it to St. Mark's square to see the fireworks. They were marvelous, and as I love fireworks more than most, enjoyed every bit of the 45 minute display which was choreographed to various music. Particularly interesting were the types of fireworks used. Many I had never seen before, and they were absolutely wonderful. America should get on the band wagon of some of these fireworks as they are great.

After the fireworks were finished, we made our way back to the bus station to catch our bus back to Johnny's. Generally, buses stop running in Venice around midnight, but due to the festival (the fireworks didn't even start until 11:30 pm) a few buses were on extended schedules. In our defense, we had received various opinions on whether the bus we needed to take would run late. After sitting at the stop for nearly 20 minutes, our bus did finally show up, but it read 'limitado' under the number. Dismissing this we got on the bus and started off towards our hotel. After the bus had driven about half way to Johnny's, the bus stopped, and the driver, in Italian was telling us 'finito', 'get off'... apparently 'limitado' meant the bus was only going half way. With few options, we began the trek back to Johnny's. Joined by a Kiwi, we made the rather dangerous walk back to Johnny's (dangerous in that roads in Italy have no shoulder, and as I posted earlier in my Rome experiences, Italian drivers drive wicked fast, at one point, I think my arm would have been ripped off had I stretched it out even a bit).