Pisa and Venice

On our way out of Far-too-hot florence, we stopped at Pisa to see the tower and the surrounding... Pisa. The tower was neat. Everything was expensive. And the tickets to see the tower were only for a specific time nearly two hours after we bought them... by which time we'd lost the tickets.

So we went to Venice, which was probably a good idea because it was (a) really expensive to get there and (b) we arrived just in time to get totally lost and ask for directions to the appropriate bus stop to get in to the hostel at 12:30am.

It's much nicer and not nearly so hot as it was in Florence, which is great, and the city is very pretty but it seems like it's mostly pretty expensive too.

After finally getting around to planning the rest of my journey, supposedly to Turkey, I discovered that Turkey was very expensive and difficult to get to. Also, my Australian friends Brennen and Richard that I've been traveling with are meeting some people we met in Rome in Amsterdam, then going to Paris then Barcelona; which is essentially my perfect replacement route since it hits two cities I'd like to see and leaves me in Barcelona at the right time.

Before leaving Florence, we managed to correct our egregious culinary errors by going out to a nice restaurant on the Piazza della Signoria, where I had Rebollita Toscana e Petto de pollo ai funghi which was amazing; I highly recommend the rebollita; it's a traditional bready soup. I don't really know how else to describe it.

In Pisa for lunch the next day we had Pizze Romantica; pizza with ham and pine nuts; and I had gnocchi quattro formaggi.

I have also had so many flavors of Gelato. Frutti di bosco, caramel, vanilla, chocolate, coconut, stratticelli, traditional flavors I can't remember the names of... Unfortunately we never managed to track down what I'd heard were the best gelaterias in Florence, but c'est la vie.