It’s amazing how little Italy is – in reality, you can go from one end of the country to the other within a day; yet, there is so much to see all around the country, and the few days we spent in the Tuscan region only gave us a small taste of what the country has to offer.
From the Cinque Terre we caught a train ride over to Pisa, where we stopped only for a few hours on our way to Florence. The three or so hours we spent in Pisa were more than enough. The Leaning tower of Pisa, the Duomo and the Cathedral are all amazing architecturally, and really worth seeing. They are all in the same area, surrounded by grass fields and enclosed by a large stone wall. The rest of the city doesn’t seem like it has much to offer, but i really recommend doing the stop over on the way to Florence, or as a side trip, as the two cities are less than 1 hour away from each other by train.
After our stop in Pisa to admire the world-renowned monuments, we got back on our train and headed to Florence. Ah, Florence, it is a beautiful and romantic city – much more in my opinion than either Venice and Paris (considered to be the cities of love!).
After arriving at the train station, it only took us about half an hour to find our hostel (yay, i think that’s when we started getting a hang of it!). The hostel itself was beautiful, with hardwood floors and chandeliers int he room – quite fancy! We also made plans to meet with our train station / Cinque Terre hike friends Jacqui and Kathy, so we got to sight see together a couple of days!
The food in Florence is probably the best I had in Italy. Another thing I highly enjoyed was sitting on one of the bridges that cross the Arno River, with a couple bottles of wine, and watching the sunset as the sky and the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge that has stores on both sides and one of the city’s main landmarks – also the only bridge that was not destroyed by bombs in WWII! – turned beautiful shades of pink and purple.
Visiting the Musei di l’Accademia was another highlight – the main masterpiece of course being the statue of David, and he did not disappoint. I went in, expecting to see one of the most famous and carefully executed statues and admire it, but upon seeing him I was completely taken aback. The beautifully crafted statue is much more impressive than I had ever imagined and it’s probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen – no picture you see will ever make it justice; you must go see the real thing to understand!
During our stay there, we walked around the city, visited the Duomo and the Cathedral as well as the Medicci Palace, went to a street market (which is only there on the weekend), made our way up to Piazzale di Michelangelo – a square above the city from where you could admire the entire city, with it’s red tile roofs-, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery of this most-romantic city.
While we stayed in Florence, we also made a day trip to a small medieval town nearby, called San Gimignano – we took a bus that took about 45 minutes or so. The town is a little like Florence, but much smaller, and less developed – the town centre itself has no access for cars, so it feels a little like going back in time.
Here again, we found a wall with a great view of vineyards that stretched for miles and miles and sat with a bottle of local wine, enjoying the Tuscan sun and great conversation for a couple of hours. – In San Gimignano we also got to eat the world’s #1 Gelato – i’m not sure who awarded them this title, but the Gelato was really good; not sure if it was the best, but it was great 
After eight hours or so, we returned to Florence, bought a couple more bottles of wine, some bread, cheese and salami, and headed to our usual spot on the bridge to watch the sunset one last time while having a pic-nic.
Posted in •Florence, •Pisa
