Today we had to leave Florence...major bummer!! we had time to get some more free breakfast and then amble over to the airport. We hopped on a train going to Pisa. We had heard that it wasnt worth too much of a stop, apparently the 5 hours we had planned 1 hour one too many...so we planned on dropping off our bags, seeing the tower and then getting back on the train!

on the train we made a new friend...a guy from Russia who kept talking and talking regardless of the fact that we were both writing and trying to look busy! and then waited for us when we got off the train! umm....we travel solo buddy. so we took our sweet time checking in our bags (but he did walk behind us all the way to the check in desk) and then slowly made it back to the entrance, hoping he wouldnt still be following us...we were safe!!! oh but we did run into Chimney! small world.

so we wandered in the direction of the tower and after like 20 mins of walking it finally popped up! sooooo much smaller than it looks in all the pictures! maybe we've just seen too many monumental buildings recently...we found out it cost a ton to walk up the tower so we took a bunch of the silly pictures with the tower in the background instead...also took a bunch of pictures of other people posing randomly...its was creepy! like human statues everywhere! we did get tickets to go into the basilica and church though. the church was amazing..complete with real dead bodies in glass coffins! and tiiiiiiny little confessionals...they were cute. and the basilica was nice too...there were stairs, so of course we had to go up them...theres no staircase we cant climb

after that we kinda ran out of things to do so we headed back to the station and left for cinque terre!

nina