Florence and Pisa

I feel so disorganised, but its actually working out fine. The Italian trains aren't all that, they do run regularly and are really cheap. I'm glad I didn't get the Eurorail pass, it doesn't really make sense. From Cinque Terre to Florence its only a 2 hour journey and the hostel is really close to the train station but they choose to run you around in circles with their directions...it should have been a 5 min walk, not 15!!

The Archi Rossi Hostel is very nice, the rooms are cosy with your own lamp and bedside shelf, and the common area is great for eating the free breakfast and cheap dinners.

Once my luggage is dropped off, I do my routine check out of the town for a few hours to get my bearings. I am totally overwhelmed by the first sight I see. The Cathedral. Coloured in the patriotic red, green and white, it is completely decorated with statues and all the trimmings.

My walk continues through streets of leather shops, gold shops, tones of people, statues, amazing architecture, and I then to the river, and the famous Ponte Vecchio Bridge.

The weather is boiling hot at this stage, and I am totally sweating!!!

'David' is in the Academia Gallery, so I wait out in the ever long queues. He really is beautiful, the statue is made of one piece of marble which is very impressive, and stands in the centre of the museum. I take a couple of sneaky pictures but quickly get yelled at for doing so.

Literally dodging the sun, I make my way back and meet my new room mate Alexandra. She's a styly lady from California. We chill out in the sweet little garden with a beer or two, finding it strange that we are the only ones enjoying the evening.

The next day we jump on a walking tour, that takes us where I went yesterday, but explains what buildings were what back when.

On this tour, I meet Vivian and Steve from Aussie. Steve and I finish the tour and trek down to the train station for a quick trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower. We had Pizza in Pisa :)

The tower is great, yet not as big as I had thought, but its well cool, and naturally we did the touristy thing, looking like a knob head trying to hold the tower up in a photo! After about 50 photos we kinda did it, but not really!

Back in Florence, we all meet up and go for a massive walk up Piazzale Michelangelo to watch the sunset over the whole city. Such great ambience, the stairway is full to the brim of sightseers and a small band was playing Italian music at the bottom as the sun slowly set over Florence. God its soooo beautiful!! We are about 3 big beers through at this stage, and decide to have a race to see who could get back to the hostel first, and I drop my beloved camera scratching it pretty bad and cracking the screen. Annoying!

The night ends with a drunk Gina, playing Kings. Brilliant.