Travel Day - Cinque Terre to Pisa to Florence

Free breakfast was lovely as usual and while I hate to say it... I am getting REALLY sick of bread. Anyways in an attempt to be money conscious I made two mini sandwiches out of some of my breakfast for lunch. Considering we have seen at least one person from UVA, planned or coincidence, in every city, except Venice, I can't say I was surprised when Magdalena, Arin and Paige recognized our friend Kate's boyfriend from UVA as we were waking to the train station. He had just arrived to meet his parents after traveling around with his friends. He has also seen UVA students (well graduates now)/ friends in every city he went to! But we were working with a deadline to get to our train so we said a quick good bye and took a picture for his parents and went on our way. We are starting to get better at the show up at the last minute for the train the way locals do, but it always makes me nervous. Since Pisa was on the way to Florence we decided to make a quick stop there to see, you guess it, the leaning tower of Pisa. Boy was it hot! 

Considering it only cost us 1,10 euro total in Pisa (for a bus ticket) I'd say it was worth it! And boy does that sucker lean.

The next train flew by and after checking the map a couple times we were on our way to Alex House a kinda hostel. The location couldn't be much better located right between the Duomo plaza and Signoria plaza. We were ready to get out and about and well get some gelato (I went with lemon and mint since it was so hot). We wandered in the direction of the Ponte Vecchio and it was just as beautiful as I remembered it.

We did a little window shopping (or bridge shopping) and I had to resist the urge to get seconds on gelato.

After walking in and out of some cool shops we killed an hour chatting and planning our next two days over a bottle of wine at Toscani. We made sure to get local Tuscan wine.

The women at the reception recommend Gusta Pizza, which supposedly has the best pizza in Florence for a good price. Well the line alone sure gave us some confidence. I ordered the Cabrese which had tomato sauce, mozzarella, spice salami and basil. 

It was so fresh (and hot) and delectable!

We were hungry...

We left our ticket as a proof of being there!

Obviously we weren't the only ones...

A random side note.. Arin handed me her phone to take a picture from my angle and this weird/trippy photo happened.

My legs through an iPhone/glass. But we were full and noticed the sun was setting!

We sat on the bridge for about 2 hours just chatting and enjoying the view.

On our walk back we were surprised by how lively the Tuesday night was! We walked by Florence's version of Rodeo Drive (and were pretty happy the stores were closed so we didn't torture ourselves), a big party, a street show and a carousel.

We also thought we were waking backing into our plaza but we ended up in Signoria Plaza,

which turned out to be a luckily find because it was only 2 blocks away from our hostel and had a public water fountain that have sparkling water!!! 

 One was sans gas and the other con gas! It was an exciting discovery to end our first night in Florence!