The day started off great. We got up at a reasonable time, had some cereal, and headed to the train station. We were in Pisa before noon. The first thing we did was find a tourist info stop and get a free map. We then navigated our way through the city to the tower.
Some pictures of Pisa.
It's not an ugly place by any means, but it's really just not as pretty as other parts of Italy we have seen. And honestly, it smells. The whole walk o the tower (about 20 minutes) smelled like sewage. Maybe they have open sewers or something. I don't know. It wasn't nice.
But seeing the tower was fun! We embraced our inner tourist. Ok, I embraced it and Jeremy took a picture.
It was actually pretty neat to see.
We walked around the rest of that square, where some of Pisa's other historic buildings are, including the duomo.
Prettiest pulpit I've ever seen.
And the baptistery.
I was pretty impressed with myself for getting a shot of all 3.
We spent about an hour in this square and then headed back to the train station. We quickly got Subway so we could go ahead to San Gimignano (pronounced ji-man-YAH-no). We got on the train around 2.
This is where things went wrong.
I had done a bit of research on this town, but not too much because it was a bit of a last-minute decision and I figured it would be easy to figure out like every other place we've been.
Wrong.
We got off the train around 4 and figured this is perfect- we have like 3 hours before sunset and then we can watch the sun set in Tuscany, head back to Florence (only an hour), and meet up with my friend Andy around 9.
I knew there was a bus to the town, but I thought it was like... Frequent... And a short ride. When we got to the station we had to go to the cafe to buy bus tickets, and the very rude cashier wasn't helpful at all. All he said was "next bus 40 minutes." I tried to ask him when the last bus back was, where to catch it, and how long the ride was, and he literally walked away. Irritating. Plus we were like holy crap- 40 minutes. That's a long time when you're only counting on about 3 hours somewhere and you have to do a ride there and back. But we were thinking whatever, we've come this far. Maybe the ride will be short and we will still have about 2 hours there.
So the ride was 45 minutes. We got dropped off and figured out that to be back to Florence around 9 we would have to catch the next bus to the train station in a mere hour. But we thought whatever! One hour here is better than nothing, and we spent all this time to get here. Lets go.
So we saw the town and it did NOT disappoint. One of the prettiest places I have ever seen.
Wall around the city
The town is famous for these towers.
We got gelato from the place in the square that has been voted best in the world.
The views from the wall were amazing.
Tiny alleyways made the city feel old, charming, and like an adventure.
Little shops and cafes lined the streets, and a line of old men watched over the square.
We did at least catch the sunset.
And we got back to the bus stop 10 mins early just to be safe.
This is where the gelato hit the fan, if you know what I mean.
The bus never came. It just never came and we waited an extra 15-20 minutes for it. We then tried to speak to every shop still open- very few- in English- even fewer could do that- about where to catch the bus. We finally got pointed to the tourist info office, our last hope for making the train. Closed. We ran around for about 5 more minutes until we finally found an English speaker who could help us. At this point we've missed our bus, train, and all hope of meeting Andy who I have no way to communicate with.
For about 5 minutes things were a little stressful.
We finally found another bus to take us to the station. It, too, was late. I texted Andy hoping he had a phone with him, and he did so that was good. The bus ride back to the train station was only about 15 minutes, making the whole experience even more confusing. After all this we had to wait another 30 minutes for the next train, the only bathroom in the station was closed, and we were hungry, stressed, and exhausted. We walked to a tiny cafe to pee and finally got on a train to Florence around 8:40.
It was a MESS.
Andy was so cool about it though. Totally fine with it and very understanding. I just felt bad.
So overall, GREAT day, amazing sights and little city.... horrible travel experience.
The way we are looking at it is this: if that's the worst travel experience we have, we are doing AWESOME. For the past two months we have been hearing horror stories. So we weren't even really upset about it- just a little stressed out.
So it all worked out and we met Andy. We went out with him a little after 10 and our new friend Victoria, plus these 3 new guys in the hostel who were from the US but studying in Milan. We got dinner and wine and everything felt ok.
I think I may be better at letting the little things go. Maybe not, but I can be hopeful. It's easier to let it go when you can say- "hey, at least we're in Europe! Hell, we must be doing something right!"
It was a great day.
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