Destination: Tuscany

More than a month ago (I am REALLY far behind on these things) I traveled down to Florence with Deanna, from Miami, and Benoit, one of my roommates, from France, to try and do Tuscany in a weekend. I think we did a pretty good job. We started in Florence, where on our first day we climbed the Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore, saw the Uffizi Gallery, an enormous collection of renaissance art, and the Accademia, where David is housed.

So illegal

We also stopped for lunch at a sandwich placed called Antico Noe, recommended by Kammeron who studied in Florence for a semester all the way back in 2007.

I'm getting hungry just looking at it.

After all that we stopped by the San Lorenzo Market, a huge made-in-florence market, with leather goods, ties, scarves, watches, jewelry, and much much more. We did a brief bit of shopping, and got some great, cheap stuff. (which you won't see here because they are gifts)

We then went to an enoteca (wine bar) nearby and enjoyed a nice Chianti (I think) from somewhere in Tuscany. For dinner we headed to Kammeron’s favorite restaurant in Florence, Trattoria Zázá. I got a cheese plate to start, which had 5 cheeses and an orange marmalade dip (it was amazing):

And then cheese ravioli in truffle sauce (which was even better). Probably one of my top 5 all time meals. You can’t get food that good in Milan.

Thus ended our first day in Florence. It was a successful one.

The next morning we headed to the two markets we missed the day before, the Mercato Nuovo and the Mercato Centrale. We only went to the Mercato Nuovo to get some good luck from the Boar statue there:

After, we headed to the Mercato Centrale for some dried fruit:

While there we saw some great scenery, such as brains:

Jaws:

And multi-colored pasta!

Gotcha

We then headed to the Fiume Arno to check out the Ponte Vecchio:

And then made our way up to the train station, stopping at Kammeron’s old apartment on the way:

Our destination that Saturday? Siena, home to the best piazza in all of Europe!
We arrived at 2 and immediately made our way down to the Piazza to grab some lunch and picnic on the piazza (called “Il Campo” because it used to be a field right outside the city walls. Campo means field in Italian, if you didn’t figure that out already). We started our picnic and gazed around, did some great people watching and seriously contemplated climbing the City Tower, but ended up deciding against it.

Torre Civica

After our lunch in Il Campo, we headed over to the Duomo of Siena, famous for its black and white striped architecture:

Entry was free, so we went in a had a good look around:

From the library, which had centuries-old hymnals

When we came back outside there was a Siennese children’s drum corps playing:

They sounded pretty awesome.
Next we headed up to the fortress just on the outskirts of the city, and got a pretty fantastic view of Siena and the surrounding countryside:

 Roomies!

We then headed down to the train station, grabbed a bottle of wine for the train and headed back to Florence. We grabbed dinner at a pizzeria on Piazza Santa Maria Novella, and it was delicious:

Quattro Formaggi

That night I went out with some Basque Spaniards I met at our hostel (along with a Finnish guy) while Benoit and Deanna wimped out and slept. It was a ton of fun and I’m gonna try to meet up with Mario and Maria (two of the Spaniards) when I finally make it to Rome (hopefully soon).

We closed out the club at around 5 that morning and headed back to our hostel to get some much needed sleep.

I got up a little later than Deanna and Benoit, but we got underway at around 10. I wanted to get to San Gimignano (a hill town in the south of Tuscany) that day but we checked out bus schedules and it just wasn’t going to work; instead we headed west to Lucca, a town with all its medieval walls still in tact, and very day-trippable. We arrived, took a quick walk around (the town is tiny) and saw pretty much all there was to see in a couple hours. We then rented bikes for an hour and rode them around the medieval ramparts of the town.

Cathedral in Lucca

Dukes of Hazzard in Italy?

Delicious, Amazing Soup

The street we got our gelato on

Medieval walls of Lucca

We closed out the day with a bit of delicious gelato from a beautiful street in the middle of town, and grabbed the last train back to Florence. We got dinner back in Florence, kebap from a place just across the street from Antico Noe. They were also delicious (I need more adjectives to describe good tasting food!). For dessert we each got crêpes from the place next door:

Crêpe!

Crêpe Flambé!

We called it an early night to recover from all the traveling we had been doing the last few days.

Exhausted

And thus, it was our last day in Florence. Our only to-do was going up to Piazzale Michelangelo, which has the best views of Florence. We checked our bags at the train station and grabbed the bus up to the Piazzale, but got off way before the piazzale itself. We decided to walk the rest of the way, which was a horrible horrible choice. The weather got worse with each step we took and by the time we finally made it up to the piazzale (about 30 minutes later) we were all thoroughly soaked and slightly miserable. The view from the top was still pretty fantastic despite the weather, but it could have been much better:

Florence in the rain

Faux-David

We didn’t linger at the piazzale and headed back to the train station to grab our train back home, sad to leave the amazingness that is Tuscany but excited to be get home to Milan once again. I have to go back to Florence at some point this month anyway, seeing as Jersey Shore starts filming there soon!

lamenting

i hate that my camera is broken. HATE IT. its horrible. its like a part of me is missing. when i'm in naples/amalfi coast/rome this weekend im going to go crazy not being able to take pictures. like insane crazy. that is all.

Best. Aquarium. Ever.

The Monday after my parents left and the day after I day tripped Como I day tripped Genova with my friend Sarah, who had found out about this awesome aquarium in the city. We got to Genova around 11, and as soon as we stepped out of the station I felt like I was back in Miami. Palm things everywhere, sea-side views, a hint of Hispanic influence… I loved it.

We grabbed a map from the tourist office and headed off to find the aquarium. We came upon it pretty quickly (Genova, despite being the capitol of Liguria, is not a very big city). We paid the 18 Euro (!!) entrance fee, and definitely got our money’s worth. One of the first tanks had manatees:

So it was like walking to class past the Business School building, when the manatees take their leisurely swim up the canals. And everyone stops to take pictures on their phones and upload them to facebook to make their friends who don’t have manatees on their campuses jealous.

We also saw some piranha:

They just floated there, waiting to strike. It was eerie

We also saw some penguins,

Which move REAL fast underwater

Chameleons,

At an aquarium…

Anemone

Baby Sharks

Dolphins! (the only animal besides humans that has sex for fun)

Jellyfish,

And tons of other majestic sea creatures who I took pictures of but am not posting because the lighting in aquariums is atrocious and I can’t hold my camera steady.

We spent around 2 hours in the aquarium, and I definitely could have spent more. It was amazing. But we wanted to see the rest of the city and to get some legit Genovese cuisine, so we headed out in search of a restaurant. The restaurant we found was a little out of the way (good, less touristy) and had some amazing pasta.

I got some really delicious pasta in a pesto sauce (Ligurian/Genovese specialty), unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the pasta

And Sarah got Gnocchi in a red sauce/pesto combo. They were both FANTASTIC. And only 5 euro apiece!

After lunch we headed out to wander around Genova some more. Of course, neither of us had done serious research before going so we weren’t really sure what to do in Genova for the day. Our main goal was to see the aquarium, and it really, truly amazingly worked out!! So we took our maps out and went to the sights they had listed. The duomo (which I didn’t get any good pictures of, unfortunately), the Palazzo Ducale (where the Dukes of Genova used to live):

And which had a few art exhibits going on. We wanted to check one of them out, with Monet and Manet paintings of the Mediterranean, but it would have cost another 15 euro. Too much sticker shock after the 18 euro we spent at the aquarium.

So we kept walking around, and ended up hanging out at Piazza de Ferrari (the main piazza) for a bit (it was right behind the Palazzo Ducale):

And then walked down Via Garibaldi, a street lined with Renaissance Palaces:

At the end of the street we were back at the Central Station, but still had an hourish till our train. We checked our maps and saw that there was a garden up on a hill overlooking the city behind the station, so we trekked up there to take it all in.

Sad we didn’t get to visit this fortress

Right outside central station there’s a statue dedicated to Genova’s most famous resident, Cristoforo Colombo:

Tryina get artistic

We spent a bit more time there just enjoying Genova, and a Brazilian guy came up to me and tried to ask me for directions to Bari (as in the capital of Puglia, on the opposite side of Italy, aka the Southeast coast and not the northwest coast.) in Italian, because I “have Italian eyes”. His words verbatim. I told him it was an 8 hour train ride away and we had a very confused conversation in Italian/English and we eventually got it sorted that I’m actually American and that I was kinda guessing as to how far he was from Bari. I wished him good luck and Sarah and I headed in to the station to catch our train back to Milan.  We watched most of Up on the way back and it was great. We still need to finish watching it, Sarah, if you’re reading this.