Where Nicole Went: Day Trips from Florence

On the fourth day of our trip, my parents and I went to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower.

Pisa is pretty straightforward — once you get off the train you walk straight down a main street for about a mile and then turn left. About a half a mile later, boom, you’re at the Leaning Tower.

I was surprised to learn that the tower is actually located right next to the city’s duomo. Call me uneducated, but all of the pictures I’d seen of the tower made it appear as though it stood alone…not quite the case.

Everyone in Italy had a selfie stick it seemed like {not hating, I brought mine but left it at the hotel} and it was hilarious to watch everyone trying to get their shots with the tower.

We walked around the plaza that the tower is apart of and saw the Pisa Duomo as well as their baptistry before we headed back to the train station.

Pisa was a really cool place to visit. I was surprised by the number of tourists we saw that were arriving to stay in Pisa. The city is located on the Arno River and had lots of restaurants and cool shops.

On Mother’s Day, we headed up to Bologna.

Once we got off the train, I got my selfie snapchat and we started walking. It was super hot, around 80 degrees and after lunch I ended up whipping this tee off and going bare shouldered in my maxi dress.

 

I loved seeing the flower boxes everyone had outside their windows. We were looking for some particular store that we didn’t end up finding (lolz my life) but I was glad we got to experience Bologna’s streets.

While we as an (immediate) family never had dachshunds, my grandparents had them, my dad grew up with them, and my uncle has always had at least two for as far back as I can remember. I’ve never seen such a concentrated population of dachshunds as I did in Italy. They were everywhere! I kept trying and forgetting to take pictures of them for my Uncle and finally seized the opportunity when we passed this little guy (or gal?) in Bologna. Naturally, if you zoom in at all, you can see how frightened the dog is.

We were so lucky to have such beautiful weather and I couldn’t get over how pretty all the buildings were.

The center of the city is a huge square that houses their shopping galleria as well as their duomo. The galleria was under construction so we didn’t really get to check out the markets but it was definitely a cool area.

My brother works in a Converse store so he was pretty awed by the huge advertisement here.

We walked down a side/main street and eventually ended up grabbing lunch.

I loved this little nursery next to the restaurant we had lunch at. I was super tempted to try and bring back some tomato plants or cantaloupe seeds, but the plants may have been a tad tricky to transport and care for in two weeks. Next time…

Of course, we had to try bologna in Bologna so we split this appetizer. I touched on this in last week’s post, but the parmesan chunks really threw me off. However, when in Rome (figuratively)….

The bologna was a million times better than Oscar Meyer which is really all I had to compare it to..? #BasicProblems

Mom tried to pasta in bolognese sauce but after reading about the potential of horse meat being in it on TripAdvisor…I did not try any. When in Rome to a certain degree, people.

I did, however, try the tortellini which the city is famous for preparing. I’d had the best tortellini of my life the night before so this was good but not quite as good, in my humble opinion.

After lunch, we went walking to look for the Majani store so we could buy some chocolate. When we got there it was closed, Sunday problems, so we made our way back to the train station.

Overall, both of these day trips were extremely doable, enjoyable and not too expensive by train.

xo, Nicole