The website was done for a bit so this post is a day behind. We'll catch up once we hit Rome.
In the last 24 hours 2 monumental things have happened: I ate pizza in Pisa, and I joined high class society as I now own a Rolex. To all those chumps in the US that are spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex, save yourself some money: buy a plane ticket to Florence and there are guys selling them on the street. The merchant I bought mine from wanted 75€ but we worked out a deal for 30€. It has the Rolex logo all over it, even on the band, so I’m sure it will be of quality.
With my Rolex on my wrist we set out for Pisa this morning. It was really easy to get there and was only about 25€ roundtrip for both of us. On the way there we bought 2nd class tickets which seemed fine. For only 5€ more we bought 1st class tickets for the way back. There is really no difference between 1st and 2nd class aside from there are slightly bigger seats, but there is no extra leg room. It might be different if you were on a longer or different train as I think some have little personal cabins but our train didn’t have any of that. We were also a bit confused that the train ticket we had was basically like a bus ticket, there were no assigned seats and you could use it anytime you just had to validate it in a little machine near the train track prior to getting on whichever train you wanted.
The leaning tower was impressive. I did the actual tour up the 300 steps to the top of it. Angie decided not to as it was 300 steps on marble with no handrails. It wasn’t too terrible of a climb, going down was harder as the marble steps were slippery. There is actually a few other things right near the tower that is all part of Piazza dei Miracoli. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time in Pisa, we had our pizza saw the tower, took some photos as proof we were there and then headed back to the train station.
There has been a breakthrough in the Florence gelato situation. We have discovered that in Florence you tell them what size cone you want and they fill it with the appropriate amount of gelato for that cone. You can do multiple flavors etc just tell them when you pick your cone. Angie is starting to grow tired of gelato and is looking to branch out into other Italian desserts. I’m still committed to at least a cone a day.
Last night for dinner we went to a nice little restaurant that was next door to the laundromat we used. Angie votes it #1 meal so far and I put it a #2 behind Galileo’s in Venice. She had a tortelloni dish that looked like it was stuffed with spinach but from the translation on the menu it said black cabbage. It was very good though. I had a gnocchi dish that was tomato, basil and mozzarella and it was good too. For our 2nd plate we shared a chicken dish that turned out to be the same exact dish we had the night before. It was chicken in a mushroom marsala sauce. We both felt it was better than the same dish the night before.
Tonight we are going to try going a bit early to a restaurant called Il Latini. We have heard several people talk of it as being a great place to go. Last night when walking back from dinner we found it and there was probably 40 people outside waiting for a table. The whole time in Italy we have never seen anyone waiting for a table so we figure that it’s probably a pretty good recommendation. If it’s too busy for dinner we’re going to try lunch there tomorrow instead.
It looks like doing a wine tasting tour isn’t going to happen. There are a few tour companies that list wine tasting tours but most are visits to a single winery and we haven’t really been able to pin down all the details of any of them. The other ones I found online that seemed to go to a few don’t do tours on Sundays. Instead we’re going to see a few more things in Florence and try going to a wine bar to try lots of different wines.