Liza goes to Pisa! (and Florence)

One day Bongo says to me, Liza we have to go to Pisa. Remember when you were a little kid in elementary school and you would say "My name is Liza, no not LiSa, Liza like the leaning tower of Pisa!" Well... we are in Italy and the time has come to visit the monument with your (rhyming) namesake!

So off we went to Pisa with Paola, Chloe, Talin, and Lisa (unfortunately her name doesn't rhyme with Pisa (but she can always go see the (Mona) Lisa in France.))

We got off to a late start getting out of the dorms at 7:35 instead of 7:15. We booked it to the trian station but weren't going to make the 8:03 ...until we caught the bus! Once on the EuroStar (the king of all trains) we relaxed. After grabbing some MacDonalds (expensive!) at the station, we switched to a TrenItalia train from Florence to Pisa. Then we hopped on a bus and arrived at destination #1.

The leaning tower of Pisa. It may not sound that exciting. Who cares right? Its just an old tower that's sinking and leans to one side. That's what I thought, until I saw it. It was SOOOOO COOL! It was just ...wow wow wow! You just have to be there. It's leaning so much. I don't know how to describe it better but it's so neat! We didn't go up because it was expensive but we did get lots of souvenirs nearby including a pair of fArmani (fake Armani) sunglasses, a fGucci belt, fUfficial national Italian soccer team jerseys and a "PISA" key chain for me (my hopes are that one day a conversation similar to this one may occur:
-"Whose keys are these?"
-"What do they look like?"
-"They say PISA"
-"Oh, maybe they belong to Liza!"

After a mini pausa (break) we took the train back to Florence. It had some technical difficulties but it was a pretty ride. Once we got into Florence we headed to the David. It cost $10 to see the real statue but it was worth it. It's huge. It's more than 3 people high counting the base. I learned that the hands and feet are disproportionately big compared to the body. You could see tiny details in the sculpture; veins in the hand, dimples on his knees, muscles on his ribcage. It was captivating. We couldn't take pictures but I got one later of the copy that is in some piazza nearby.

Then we went to see the Duomo. It was the first dome built since the Romans used this long-forgotten technique. Unfortunately we came just after it closed and weren't able to go up it to see the beautiful view of Florence. We took pictures of the church attached to it and also Brunelleschi's bronze doors of passion at the baptistry right nearby.

After finding out that the Uffizzi gallery was closed as well, we went to see the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge) over the Arno. It was totally picturesque as the sun was setting.

All in all it was a great trip considering we were able to cover Pisa AND Florence all in one day. We should looked up the schedules before we left and mapped out where we would walk so that we wouldn't have wasted time doing that but for a first trip, it was just great!