After that, we left France and made our way into Italy. There were tons of tunnels that we had to go through when we crossed the border, probably hundreds of them. The hillsides were full of grape vines and other assorted things. It was very pretty, but didn't seem that much different from France so far. However, at our first service stop we noticed a difference. No longer were our choices for lunch different kinds of baguette sandwiches, but different kinds of pizza and pasta. And the pizza was so good. It was different from most of the pizza made in the U.S. mostly because they put lots of interesting toppings on it (or almost none at all) and the crust is much simpler and yummier. Also, they had this really stupid way of getting your food. First, you go to the counter and decide what you want. Then, you try to remember what the thing you wanted was called while you wait in line to pay. After paying, you get a receipt which you give to the person at the counter. They, in turn, heat up your food (or whatever) and then call out your food order. You could so easily just take someone else's food without paying for it. It's just crazy. I have no idea why they do it like that.
Anyway, after lunch and some more driving we arrived in Pisa. We had to park quite a ways from where the tower and baptistry was, so we had a little bit of a walk into the city. Jase warned us about the gypsies and other people begging for money (and trying to steal it), but I hardly saw any such people and definitely did not have any problems. However, once you get close to the leaning tower, you have to go past hundreds of stupid little booths with people selling fake designer handbags, plastic leaning towers in twenty different colors and all other sorts of crap. That part was pretty annoying I must say. But whatever, we had no choice, it was the only way to get there. Finally we reached the courtyard area where the famous baptistry and leaning tower were. I would like to say for the record that even I was surprised at how much the tower was actually leaning. I had seen lots of pictures and read about it and everything, but when you get there, it's so different. It really looks like it just might fall over. It's so weird. I loved it. Of course, I had to take the obvious picture that every tourist does:
Kind of stupid, I know, but you have to do it (I am standing up on a little pillar to make the picture better). [Note that the tower was open and people were at the very top. I wish I had time (and money) to go up, but oh well. Next time.] Most people took the picture holding it up, but there were a few destructive personalities who were trying to push it over. We got yelled at by the Italian cops because you aren't supposed to be standing on the grass. Oops. Oh well. That's the best place to be to take the pictures. And everyone else was doing it (not that that's an excuse). This luckily only took a couple of tries to get it right. Unfortunately, there were like 50 of us all trying to get the same picture. By this time in the trip, though, we were all getting pretty good at using everyone else's cameras to take pictures. What would always happen though would be that one person would inadvertently get stuck with all the cameras to take a group picture.
The group pictures are always good, though. This one has: Erwin, Paul, Quinn (Q-in), Jaz (Sylvie), Louise, Mardi, me, Katie (Copper), Tina, Andrew, Liliana, Dora, and Michael and Kerry at the bottom. Oh good times. It was really hot though, so we were glad to have to go back to the bus after only about half an hour.
After Pisa we headed into Florence (Firenze) which wasn't too far away. We settled into our cabins, which were nice because they were new, but the rooms were too small (there was a big common room though in each cabin) and there was no ventilation at all. It was really really hot and we were just kind of miserable because of that. We wanted to go swimming, but didn't have time until the following day. After dinner (which was pretty good actually, cooked by the Contiki reps there), Jase took us into the city itself. We walked by the Santa Croce church and ended up the Red Garter Pub. It was an American-style bar (oh, good, I came all the way to Italy to go to an American-style bar) that had some guy playing live music who also brought people up to do really low-tech karaoke. Paul and I sang "I'm a Believer" after we had both had a few drinks. The funniest thing though was probably the Mexicans singing "La Bamba". That, and Jase being ridiculously drunk since it was his 30th birthday (I don't blame him). We decided to stay a while and take a taxi back to the campsite which was an adventure in and of itself. At first, we didn't want to wait for a taxi at the pub, so about five of us began wandering around the streets of Florence trying to hail a taxi. After about 15 minutes, we gave up and headed back to the pub (luckily I have a good sense of direction, even while slightly intoxicated) where we got a taxi pretty quickly. It wasn't all in vain though since we found an internet cafe that we went back to the following day.
next day...
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