Day 8/9: Florence, Pisa, and Lucca

The Ponte Vecchio - over priced jewelry and coats but still looks really cool

Florence city-scape

The Duomo - everything leads to it

A view looking back at Lucca from the wall that surrounds it

Mark that one off the bucket list

Yesterday, the 25th, was a pretty chill day in Florence for me. Instead of class our program went on a tour of a section of the city - seeing the sights, talking about the history of it and wandering the streets. A good break from class to be honest. After lunch, I wandered over to a different cafe in a part of town I'm not too familiar with past our school to do some reading for the next day's class but ended up sitting there getting lost in 2 Corinthians for a couple of hours. Me and my roommate signed up for a wine tasting at some guy's winery in town and it ended up being really interesting - learned all sorts of things about wine ediquitte, what a good wine looks like, how different regions produce certain kind of wines, what meals and menu items go best with certain kind of wines, the history of some famous Tuscan wine...everything. I came out feeling more than informed. After that it was around 8:00 and I thought I'd go to a place on the other side of the river, Piazzale Michelangelo, which is way up on a hill a good ways away from the city center. Turned out it was about a 45 minute walk from my hotel (didn't expect that) but was totally worth the hike. The view was incredible. Once I got back around 11:00 I crashed and went to bed.

Today (the 26th) I had class at 8:30, got an espresso then had class again at 11:30, then had lunch at the hotel at 1. A very standard weekday morning which lets me relax a little and attempt to strike up conversation with someone at the cafe (which usually goes about as far as me asking them if they speak english [in Italian of course], them saying no, and that is that - but that's not always the case). For the rest of the day my program decided we wanted to see Pisa (and the infamous leaning tower) and another smaller city called Lucca. Since it was a bigger group we decided to split it up and go at different times to make traveling easier so me and my roommate went right after class with a few other people and made our way to Pisa. Literally nothing to do there except act like you yourself and all of your might are holding this falling structure in its place (but we expected that). So after a short stint in Pisa we hopped on a bus to Lucca which was just 3o minutes away. It was a good break from busy and loud Florence (which I didn't know how busy and loud it was until I got to Lucca). Similar architecture but just a lot quieter and more peaceful. It's an interesting town because it is completely surrounded by a wall which fortified the whole city. After walking around, finding a place for dinner and getting some gelato we found the next train back to Florence. I have no idea where this day went - from class to now seems like 2 hours (it's been 11 by the way). Well that's about all I have for now - I'm exhausted and could use a good night's sleep.