Pisa & Lucca

On Friday, we took a short day trip to Pisa and Lucca! Nicole and I hopped on a train and met up with Tony (PKP friend from Rome) and his roommates, Mike and Neil, at the Pisa train station. We journeyed to the famous Leaning Tower, which was pretty cool, much better than the pictures. We took a ton of touristy photos of ourselves and then we definitely peaced it out of Pisa because other than the leaning tower, there is absolutely nothing there. So then we got on a train and went to Lucca, which is a very old Roman citystate. The entire city has a huge wall around it that was used to close in the city when enemies arrived back in the day. We had lunch at the oldest restaurant in the city, Bistro Sant’ Angelo (est. 1170). Although expensive, it was very good. I had some type of pie thing with artichokes and ricotta inside of it… interesting – yes but still tasty. We walked around for a while and went into two different cathedrals and then realized that we had to get back on a train to Florence to meet Neil’s girlfriend and Nicole’s friend Angie (studying in Tourino) at the station at 6ish – but it got really cold and windy out anyways so I was kind of glad to go, but I definitely want to go back to Lucca and wander through the quaint little town. Oh, and it was really exciting because now that I’m learning a lot more of the language I can talk to some of the locals, who are usually very nice. And when I say talk, I mean ask them for directions and then they something that I usually don’t understand but get the jist of because they point in one direction or the other, so that was really exciting. Once we got back to Florence, Tony, Mike, and Angie came with us to our apartment where we started in on some wine we picked up and then made some Baked Ziti – which turned out amazing, if I do say so myself (thanks dad for the conversion info and the oven advice – couldn’t have done it without you)!! We then proceeded to go out to a disco called “Twice” where we danced the night away! 

February 29, 2008