Days 9 & 10 in Firenze

Buona sera. I’ve been really busy this weekend travelling and partying, so I have plenty to tell you about tonight. Better get started. This weekend I spent time in Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa, and a bar in Florence called Central Park. So to make it easier, I’m gonna organize my blog according to the place where I was at because I really didn’t do anything but visit those places. However, I do have one quick picture to share with you. Check out this road sign along a busy six lane major thoroughfare here in Florence. A little morbid don’t you think? I love it!

Siena

First on the agenda this weekend was an early morning visit to Siena, which is about an hour and a half away from Florence by bus. The bus our class took was a double-decker, how fun! Anyway, we had to catch the bus at 7am, but it was totally worth it. Siena is an absolutely beautiful city. It’s built on a set of rolling hills, so there are a lot of elevation changes from one section of the city to another. It’s also less touristy than Florence and much cleaner. You know how I’ve been complaining that Florence has a stench to it? Well, the air in Siena was perfectly clear. Perhaps this was because they didn’t have hundreds of dumpsters lining the streets and hardly any cars or scooters driving around. If you ever get a chance to visit Siena, I highly recommend it.
I don’t have too many stories about Siena. We had a group lunch there paid for by the program. This was by far the best meal I’ve had yet in Italy. First up for antipasta was a plate filled with three different kinds of bread (small pieces) with different toppings and three different kinds of meat. One of the pieces of bread was basically bruschetta, another was topped with some kind of sardine paste, and the last was covered with pesto. The pesto bread was good, if not a little too garlic-y. The paste-covered bread didn’t look appetizing and I didn’t like it at all. However, the bruschetta was delicious. I don’t even like tomatoes, but this was amazing. I think it was the quality of the tomatoes combined with whatever kind of oil that was drizzled over it. The meats were prosciutto and two kinds of salam; nothing to write home about. Next dish was a plate of penne pasta in a tomato sauce with grilled eggplant. This dish was very good. The last thing we were served was…wait for it…you guessed it, turkey and potatoes. However, at least this time the potatoes weren’t french fries. They were cut up pieces of potatoes cooked and covered in olive oil and seasoning. The turkey also was covered in some kind of sauce. Both items were very good. I know turkey and potatoes really aren’t an Italian delicacy, but I think we keep getting them because they are the cheapest item on the menu. Oh well, this time it was all delicious and I’m not about to complain.

When we ate lunch we were at a restaurant in the main square of Siena, the Piazza del Campo. For hundreds of years the people of Siena have been holding a horse race in this square, the Palio di Siena. When our tour guide was telling us about this, I didn’t believe it could be done. She said that up to 10 horses race three laps around this square in a very narrow ring that has several elevation changes. It just didn’t look like a place that would be fit for horse racing. But apparently, it works and it’s a huge event. One of the interesting things about the race is that there are no rules. The jockeys can use their horse to block other horses, can try to knock the other jockeys from their horses, or even bribe other teams to block for them. Each of the 17 sections of the city has its own horse (although not all make it to the signature race) and it’s a great source of pride to have the winning horse; so they’ll do whatever it takes. I did see a postcard with an aerial picture of what the square looks like on race day and it’s pretty amazing. Being the cheapskate that I am, I took a picture of the postcard instead of buying it. Here are a couple pictures of the square so you can compare. Pretty unbelievable huh?
San Gimignano

After leaving Siena, we headed to San Gimignano. I had trouble being able to say the name of the city properly, so I resorted to referring to it as St. Jimmy Johns. I’m sure the city’s residents really appreciated that. We were told that this town was one of the few towns in Italy to have many of its medieval towers still intact. We paid four euros to climb to the top of the tallest of said towers (the one in the middle of the first picture below). It offered quite the view. While there I also visited the home of the “Gelato World Champion” to have my daily dose of gelato. I branched out here and got coffee…and strawberry. The coffee was delicious as always but OH. MY. GOD. The strawberry was out of this world. If the line wasn’t so long and I wasn’t so short on cash, I would’ve gone back for more. Next time I get gelato in Florence, I think I’m going to get strawberry again. I hope it doesn’t disappoint. (Bonus of the day: check out this picture of a flower growing at the top of the tower we climbed; I think it’s pretty good.)
Central Park

We all needed a release so we went out as a big group again last night once everybody was rested and cleaned up after our road trip. We pre-gamed a little at the hotel before leaving around 11:30 to walk to this club people wanted to go to: Central Park. Turns out that this bar was at least two or three miles away because it took us about 35 minutes to get there. Actually, it’s amazing we got there at all because the only directions we had were, “follow this road to the river and then turn left.” Um, okay. Turns out that the bar was on the right, but we found it without a problem.

Let me just tell you a little bit about this bar. We had information that the bar charged a steep cover (20 euros; about $32), but that you could avoid it if you got there before 12:30 or 1am. Not sure which time turned out to be correct, but we didn’t have to pay any cover. Perhaps it was because we were American, perhaps it was because the person organizing this negotiated something with the doorman, or perhaps it was because we had attractive American girls with us. Probably the third option, but I’ll explain that in a moment.

Anyway, this bar operates in a really weird way: you get a drink card when you enter and as you get drinks from any of the bars inside, they punch a hole in the card to indicate the kind of drink you purchase. Then when it’s time to leave, you get in line to show a cashier your drink card and pay (note: they’re one step ahead of you, if you lose your drink card then you have to pay 50 euros and can’t get out without an exit receipt from the cashier). Luckily, this meant I could charge my drinks. Unfortunately, the drinks were expensive as hell. I got just one drink, a Long Island, and that set me back 11 euros ($16). Ouch! Oh yeah, the most important characteristic about this bar is that it is outside and has several different dance floor areas playing different kinds of music. We spent most of our time cutting some rug on the techno and hip hop dance floors. I am not a good dancer by any stretch, but when I’ve consumed a lot of alcohol, I can embarrass myself with the best of them. And it just so happened that I was plenty inebriated: I had drunk a bottle of wine before leaving the hotel and the Long Island was super stiff (i.e. super gross).

Notwithstanding the terrible tasting but potent Long Island, this place was quite a fun experience. The crowd was a very interesting mix of Italian men. No, you didn’t read that wrong, it was almost exclusively Italian men and the 10-15 American girls we brought with our group. There were some Italian ladies there, but the Italian guys were much more attracted to the girls there with us. And these Italian guys were incredibly creepy too. Their approach to getting women: stare, stalk, and grope. I remember that there was a point in the night when a small group of us were just hanging out away from the dance floors and there were three Italian guys just hovering behind the three girls from our program we were talking with. The guys weren’t talking amongst themselves; I’m pretty sure they were just waiting for us to leave so they could swoop in for maximum creepiness. Still, the creepy Italians couldn’t prevent us from having a good time. We danced and drank (but mostly just danced) until 4am. Supposedly, this place doesn’t shut down until late in the morning. When we left at 4, the place was still packed. I’m sure they weren’t very happy that we were taking all the good girls with us. Overall though, I had a lot of fun for not being a dancer. Plus, hopefully that helped me work off some of my gelato calorie intake.

I had my camera with me but only took a couple of pictures because it was too dark to get any good shots. You can kind of get an idea what this place looked like though, so I’ll show you one.

Pisa

When we woke up today around 12:30pm, we decided we should go to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. So we trucked over to the Florence train station. It’s only about a 15 minute walk but we arrived at the station from some weird direction (this is important later). We had a little trouble figuring out what train we needed to catch and how to use the automated machines to get the ticket we needed. Once we figured it all out we hopped on the train and began our journey.

Just over an hour later we arrived in Pisa. We walked around a little bit and found our way over to the Leaning Tower. I have to say that I was a little bit underwhelmed by the tower. Sure it’s leaning, but it’s kind of hard to be in awe of a monument and city that wouldn’t even be on the map if not for some shoddy engineering over 800 years ago. Also, it’s not as evident in pictures I’ve seen elsewhere, but the building is actually curved. After the early floors started to lean one way, the subsequent floors were built with one side higher than the other to compensate and make the building lean back the other way. So if it looks like my camera warped the tower, just know that it wasn’t my camera, the tower just really looks like that. After taking photographs from every imaginable angle, we walked around a little bit and then realized that Pisa really doesn’t have anything else to offer so we headed back to the train station. However, we did take some time to both purchase leaning shot glasses. They’re pretty cool and I can’t wait to use it.
Okay, here’s where the story gets fun. We get to the Pisa train station and according to the schedule, a train is supposed to depart in about 10 minutes to Florence. We get our tickets and head over to the platform. I take a look at the sign and it has a space to indicate if there is a delay (which appropriately in Italian is “ritardo”) and it scrolls, “SOPPRESSO.”

Well, unfortunately that word is not one of the twenty or so Italian words I do know, so I had no idea what was in store for us. Turns out that word means cancelled. Later we are told that the train operators have gone on strike. Apparently they do this from time to time. I don’t know or understand why. Obviously, if you are going on strike repeatedly, then it’s not having the effect that you would like it to have. Try better tactics you morons. Lucky for us we ran into more people from our program on the platform; those poor souls had been there for an hour before us. This is when we found out what we had missed at the train station in Florence: there had been a large group of people demonstrating out in front of the station and presented clear evidence that there was some kind of strike going on. Oops, we missed it. Also, apparently when the train operators strike here, it’s not always all of them together. Sometimes, it’s just a few operators at a time.

We waited on the platform for close to an hour and a half while train after train to Florence was cancelled (one runs about every 20 minutes). Then into the station pulls a train headed to Florence – was the strike already over? Who knows. By this time there were probably close to 350 people waiting on the platform to catch the train to Florence. Well, instead of sending one of the longer, perhaps ten car trains, they sent a four car train. It’s a mad dash to the doors and the Italians are pushing and shoving like it’s a matter of life or death; I had to box some of them out so that our people would all be assured of getting on the train. It was standing room only for the ride back and it was getting stuffy. Another weird thing about Italians: they don’t like windows. With the windows open, there was a nice breeze and it wasn’t too stuffy or hot. Well, apparently to keep their hair from getting messed up, several Italian guys closed the windows by their seats. We had to campaign to keep the window nearest us open. But with the windows closed, you can only imagine how hot and stinky it got in that train car since Italians also hate bathing and deodorant (but trust me, don’t try too hard to imagine this, it’s not something you want to experience). In the end though, we all made it home safely and had a new found sense of disdain for public transportation and the Italian working class.

The End

Okay, it’s been a busy weekend and I’ve written all I can bear to write about it and probably more than you want to read about it. Time for me to go to bed. Ciao!