and realized that was an awesome strategy. Because honestly Italy has a lot of things going for it - beautiful scenery, really old stuff, pretty architecture - the problem is Italy itself. Suffice it to say I was not terribly impressed with country. Nicholas and I had issues in Rome, but I thought that was just Rome. (Plus, in interest of full disclosure, at that point in our trip I was rocking some hard core homesickness and a wicked sunburn). Well, it's not just Rome. The people staffing the sites were rude, the train was needlessly complicated and crowded, and the city just lacked charm. (Of course all of this in my humble opinion; many, many others have nothing but nice things to say about the city.)Anyway, putting all that aside, I did get to see some things I've wanted to see for a long time. Ever since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy, I've had a minor obsession with Michaelangelo, so getting to see his city was pretty awesome.
Here's the Basilica of San Lorenzo, where the Medici tombs are:
I wasn't able to take pics inside the chapel, but here's a photo of the tombs I got off the internet:
I seriously could have spent all day in there. They were absolutely beautiful. I did snatch an illegal picture of these awesome statues:
They were crazy intricate in person. There's actually smaller statues inside the bigger ones. The photo doesn't do them justice.
After that, we went to the massive Duomo, which was quite impressive. I went up into the dome, but only to the second level. I kinda freaked about the height there, so decided not to go up to the outside edge. I was sooo glad when I saw that the rail around the viewing platform? Yeah, not so much with the height on that. Anyway, I did peer out of a window and the view was awesome. Tuscany is famous for a reason.
The rest of the day and the next morning we just wandered the city. The famed bridge is kind of crazy looking. There are actual stores built into it. Cool, but odd. I also did quite a bit of shopping at one of the markets near our hostel. That was a lot of fun.
The second day we were there, we left mid-day and took the train to Pisa. The clouds there were very threatening, so I basically did another bad dash through the city just to see the Tower. Some day I'll actually spend more than three hours there. (Nicholas and I actually ran the distance though. I learned better this time and took the bus. Much better decision.)
After that adventure, we headed out to the airport in Pisa to wait for our flight to Gerona, a small town an hour outside of Barcelona. This is the point where things got absolutely insane. (Even more than than our ride from Milan to Florence two days before during which we got kicked out of our seats an hour before reaching the city because they failed to tell us we needed reservations for seats. And yes, we bought the tickets from an agent. Sigh.)The flight was delayed. And then delayed some more. And wait...delayed some more. We were very concerned about actually being able to catch a bus into the city that late at night (it was nearing 11pm at this point) and I was quite sure I was going to spending the night in the airport. Luckily, the buses waited on the plane. We got into Barcelona around 2:30am. Other than a taxi driver who ripped us off, things went much smoother from there on out. More about Spain next post!
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