Florence

I have not been the best at keeping this up this summer and I am truly sorry. I have had a busy and fun 2 months!

After Rome came Florence!

We took the train to Florence and it was a bit of a crazy bit. We found a train that went to Florence and a lady even directed us there (although we should have known better because we had to give her money after she took us to the wrong train). Thankfully, we figured out 20 minutes before our train was supposed to depart that we were on the wrong one, hopped off and were off for the right one.

Overlooking Florence

The train took about 3 hours and the hostel was a lot easier to find this time. We stayed at Hotel Marcella and it was a lot easier to find that the hostel in Rome BUT it was up 6 flights of stairs. The old man who owns the place was a huge sweetheart but he did not speak English. He did however, have a bottle opener when we mistakenly bought a bottle of wine without having the nice people in the store to open it.

So we went off on a journey through Florence. It was very nice and picturesque and very relaxing compared to Rome and I liked it a lot better than Rome. We went to El Dumo and took a CitySightSeeing in Florence. They took my nice pretty ticket from Rome for a small discount for Florence.

El Dumo

While we were in Florence, Pisa was so close we couldn't resist taking a half day trip over on the bus. Even though Pisa is extremely famous for the leaning tower, there really wasn't much to the town so after an hour or two we hopped back on the bus to Florence.

Pisa

The last day we were there, we decided to visit the art galleries that housed Michelangelo’s David and the Gallery Uffizzi which had the Birth of Venus and a lot of other famous works that I remember learning about in high school . It took forever to get into the two places though! I am really glad we left the galleries until the last day because we needed the entire day to wait in line. To wait for Michelangelo we stood in line for about an hour. I really didn’t like Michelangelo’s David as much as I thought I would. I thought his hands were so disproportionate from the rest of his body, but then again that is just me.

The Gallery Uffizzi was a pain in the bottom. Because we didn’t book our tickets beforehand, we stood in line to get tickets for 5 hours but it was worth it! I’m pretty sure we spent as much time in the Gallery as we did waiting in line and we were exhausted that night. And we made friends with a lovely American family. They were on their fourth time to Italy as a family, the father worked in NYC while the rest of the family lived in Alabama.

We headed off early the next day and made our way back to England.

Ticket to Italy

MAKE WAY EVERYONE! MAKE WAY!
I AM TRAVELING TO ITALY. OFFICIALLY.


This is crazy. A little 9 days separate me from the Europe, more specifically England. Then 6 days after my arrival to England, I'm flying out (with Becky of course!) to Italy.


So many adventures will happen!


We are flying out June 6th to Ciampino, Italy and staying in Rome for 4 nights and then heading up to Florence and Pisa for 3 and then we are back to England!


Crazy huh?


We were able to get cheap tickets from ryanair.com for about $150, other travel sites had prices listed on average for $200.  If you like planning ahead (like I do!) RyanAir is the cheap way to go. There are of course restrictions to what you can bring but I'm sure I can get by with a little bag for a week! WHICH REMINDS ME I HAVE TO PACK! Oh dear, 1 piece of luggage will be the death of me...

Not mine but I fear it will be..

Getting the plane ticket, in my opinion, is the easiest part of the trip. Next came hostel booking. I searched for weeks comparing hostels (ughhh so many) prices, ratings and so on and so forth on hostelworld.com. The final decision came to Ottimista - Furio Camillio for Rome and Hotel Marcella for Florence. While we were planning on staying in hostels, these bed and breakfasts were a lot cheaper (and were less likely to put me into an anxiety attack!).

Rome

But how do you get from Rome to Florence with no car? Take the train! Italiarail.com was the place to go. The train tickets were fairly cheap, around $67 roundtrip. It also wasn't too bad working around the plane ticket (we have to be back in Ciampino by 4 on the 13th). 


All that is left is to get bus passes for Rome, plan out what we are going to see there, bus tickets for Florence (around the city), and a bus to and from Florence to Pisa (cliche picture of me holding up the leaning tower her I come!)

Pretend I'm holding it up! 

Also, as a last note, I know I haven't been great keeping up with blogging, these last few weeks have been absolutely nuts!