Pisa

I’ve missed travelling so much. I’ve been in Naples for two months now and if you don’t count a day trip to Sorrento (which is only an hour away by the local train), going to school in Quarto or the nights eating out in Restaurants in god knows where, I hadn’t seen any of Italy! Two months into my stay in Germany and I’d already been to Munich, Neuschwanstein, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Nuremberg. So finally the time come for me to leave this city and cross something off of my “must see” list.

When you think Italy, for me at least, the first image I see is the leaning tower of Pisa. It’s like Big Ben for the UK. I couldn’t live in Italy for 4 months without having seen it. I travelled up travelled up to Pisa on Thursday morning using the high speed railway. The train was amazing, possibly better than the ICE! Not only did everyone get a table seat, you could also use their WiFi (usually you have to pay for it, but until the 30th April its free). I had a quick stop over in Firenze/Florence and then I caught a regional train to Pisa.

I wasn’t travelling alone. My friend from my home uni is studying in Forli’ at the moment and she met me in Firenze. If you read my previous post then you’ll know that I was a little apprehensive about spending two nights with her. Luckily because we haven’t seen each other in such a long time I was able to tolerate her a lot more and I can truthfully say that I enjoyed her company on the trip. In fact her in ability to use a camera was one of the highlights of the trip.

So my friend isn’t the most technically able 21 year old. She received her first ever camera this Christmas and apart from taking a few photos on a recent trip to Verona she hasn’t tried it out much. The camera itself is very basic. It’s a plasticy hitachi with only 5 megapixels, but its better that way. You see all she knew was how to turn it on, take a photo and delete. Our first hurdle was that she had not bought an SD card (because she didn’t know where to buy one or what type she needed), so she had only space for 14 photos. I managed to persuade her to buy an SD card from one of the stalls opposite the tower. She bought an over priced 2GB card which then gave her a whopping 3000 free photos. Holy cow! As time went one I managed to teach her how to use zoom, flash and video. She’s now quite the wizkid with cameras haha.

We managed to pack a lot into just a full day and a bit. My first fear was what to do in Pisa. My boyfriend had been there a few years ago and he told me that all you needed was a few hours to see the tower and then you are ready to leave. This isn’t true and I will be writing another post on what other things there are to see in Pisa for any one who is interested.

One thing that I didn’t get to do in Pisa was eat in a Restaurant! My friend had precooked all of her meals for the trip so she didn’t need to buy food. This meant that I couldn’t really drag her into a restaurant to watch me eating some delicious meal. I ended up eating Foccacia (for the first time), a Kebab and Mcdonalds haha. I know what you’re thinking, “you go to Italy and eat Mcdonalds!”. Don’t be so hasty to judge. I have eaten Italian food everyday for the last two months, its about time I ate something else. Two months without Maccy Ds, didn’t think it was possible.

I didn’t go souvenir crazy in Pisa but I did buy this:

BEST MUG EVER

and this:

So the verdict. Did I like Pisa? Yes, I loved it. It is so quiet, calm, pretty, clean, small. I could happily live there. However one thing I hated was that everyone speaks English! Naples may not be the most beautiful place in Italy but at least I can practice my Italian with ease.