So as I said in an earlier post, I was traveling outside of Florence this weekend for the first time. On Friday I went with my two roommates to Pisa, and then on Saturday I went with one of my roommates and three other friends to "Volterra" (I'll explain the quotations in the post about)
Getting to Pisa we had decided to take the train; and because my one roommate wanted to try, we scheduled the train that would cause us to switch between trains to get to Pisa. Now, Pisa has two different train stations, so I chose the station that was closest to the Piazza del Duomo (that's the big area where the leaning tower is for those of you non-technical termed folk). Little did I know that this station was a bit...how should I say this...janky. Regardless, we got to Pisa just fine, train switching and all, and head off to find the complex. Here are some pictures that I took, uber tourist style, of the train and ride into Pisa.
That's one of my roommates, Christian, on the left. Our train was actually pretty nice.
Finally leaving the station!
Seeing the cities from outside of them was just so beautiful.
Fortunately the station was literally right down the street, and it was a short walk. Unfortunately it was pretty much pouring. But most of the things that you would look at in Pisa are indoors. So as soon as we got there we headed for the ticket office to find out how much it would be for the museums and such.
They actually offer a pretty sweet deal for 7 Euro that gets you into two places of your choice and then the Cathedral. So we chose the Fresco Museum and the Baptistery. We hit up the Fresco Museum first, because that was attached to the ticket office. It contained the old frescos that (and this is just the jist of what I got) were all around the cemetery complex. A lot of the time the fresco was worn away, but I felt like that revealed some of the most interesting parts because when the top layer is worn away you can see the charcoal outlines of what the artist had originally done or test-sketched. It tells a lot more than just their final painting.
I also just found the building these fresos were housed in to be super interesting.
I tried to get all artsy with this shot.
So after we marveled at the frescos for a while, and I enjoyed the people being torn apart in the judgement fresco scene, we headed over to the increadibly monstrous and absolutely gorgeous Cathedral. And this was the first thing I noticed when I stepped through the door.
I mean, look at that ceiling.
And this ceiling.
And this ceiling too.
This one too. But also the incredibly gorgeous pastel-like paintings that adroned the walls. I was taken aback as an art-history minor. My jaw dropped. Literally.
I just.....Do I even need to speak about the beauty of this?
And then the architect in me marveled at the groin vaults. The engineering in these things are fantastic. And they're so beautiful too.
This was outside the Cathedral looking up. The colonade was so beautiful, even under a dreary sky.
Then we headed over to the Baptistery. It's a small building, but it's known for the domes acoustics. Not to mention it's yet another beautiful building, with great views, that probably gets overlooked because of the leaning tower.
Bravo to whomever decided to add the lighting to the vaults like that. it was absolutely beautiful.
And then we took this lovely dungeion-like staircase to the upper area, where we were lucky enough to hear a guard perform a vocal demonstation inthe center of the dome so we could hear the acoutsitcs of it.
Fantastic view from the top.
And there's the little nugget of the leaning tower. I, personally, was not all that impressed when I saw it.
So after seeing everything, we still had super long before our train back to Florence, so we started off using our extra time to sit down and eat some good, authentic, Italian pizza in Pisa. We spend at least a good hour and a half in this small pizzeria, and still had time to spare. So we walked around the complex some more and then hung out in the Fresco museum and took advantage of the free video about the leanign tower of Pisa. Although the grumpy museum ticket man gave us some looks. I was cold, and wet, and going to utilize it as much as possible. So once the buildings started to close, we headed back to our train station and sat on a bench and read until our train got there. And that was basically the Pisa trip. I'd deem it a success because I very much enjoyed it. There isn't much to do there, and the people that work there are super grumpy, but there is no denyign the brilliance of the buildings there.
The next day, we headed ona bus off to Siena. From there, we had heard that we would be able to get a bus to Volterra. But when we finally got to Siena and asked about the bus to Volterra (approx 11am) we were told that there wouldn't be a bus until about 1:40pm, and we may not get a bus back to Siena that same night. That was a tough blow for first thing in the morning. Thankfully, Pam had researched a town that was close to Volterra, and Volterra-like, called San Gimigniano. So we asked about that town, and luck seemed to be on our side! There was a bus in about 40 minutes that we could take, and buses were definitely coming back to Siena that same day.
We bought our tickets, got on the bus, and were off to San Gimigniano! This bus ride gave even better views of the country-side than the train did. It was another gloomy day, but I did the best I could at capturing the gorgeous Tuscany expanse.
This was one of my favorite pictures. I just love these trees, and I don't quite know why.
The town was a walled-in fortress and once we stepped through the entrance, this was the quaint view that we saw.
Do you see that well in the center of the plaza? I was joking about them buring witches at the stake there, but this town had TWO torture museums, so I'm going to assume that I was pretty spot-on.
LOTR: The Two Towers....Just kidding.
When we got to high enough points in the city and could step outside the walls, we were greeting with incredible views like this. They were mind-blowing and no picture could ever entire capture the beauty that we saw.
So after eating some more delicious pizza, and wondering around a the souvenir shops (because the real shops were to expensive for us to even dream about) we were hoping to catch a 3:40pm bus back to Siena, so we could catch a 5pm bus back to Florence and be home in time to cook dinner and rest before church the next day. Unfortunately we read the schedule wrong, and since it was a Saturday the buses were running less. It was about 4pm and the next bus wouldn't come until 7:40pm, and even then we wouldn't get back to Siena in enough time to catch a bus to Florence for the night. It was cold and rainy and we couldn't just sit outside until 7pm anyways, so a few of us headed back into the city to talk to the lovely people that the tourist agency and figure out our best options. Fortunately the people there are super helpful and lovely and told us an better route to a different city, where we could then take a bus straight the Florence. The best part was that we could use the two return bus tickets we had already purchased. And within another 40 minutes we were on a bus headed back towards a bus that would take us back towards home.
It is now well noted that trains can be planned in advance to outlying cities much easier, and that if a bus is cheaper, times and alternate routes should definitely be well researched.
Then today, Rachel and I braved taking a Florence city bus to check out another church. It was later concluded that this was by far the simplest means of transportation to non-walkable areas. By far.
Either way, I consider our traveling a success. We didn't die, get lost, or stranded. We got to see some amazing things, and just experience life a bit more. And I'd say we all gained a little bit of caution and felt the need for better planning. It was good to get the kinks out of the way while being not too far from our homes.
Bueno!
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