Journal 36
December 9th, 2004
Italy, Day 3
Rome/Pisa/Florence/Bologna/Milan

"What day is it?"

Thursday:

Today was completely crazyyyyyy - to say the least. We woke up at 6am to get down to the station around 7:15ish or so. After showering and packing up we headed downstairs to check out. I tried to plug my laptop in so I could d/l the email that I had waiting for me online; I could read it, but I prefer to respond on my laptop. Anyway, it wasn't working so I was s.o.l. Chris and I left Yellow Hostel and headed toward the Termini station. We went to the Eurostar Club and checked in there because we needed to have our passes validated. The lady spoke english, which was good; she valided our passes for us and we confirmed the train we were planning to take.

Once on the train we had a whole cabin to ourselves. We passed through a shitload of cities though. We took and IC (InterCity) train which stops pretty much everywhere it can. I sat and read a tour guidebook that my mom had bought me; and Chris read a bunch of magazines he brought. We made it to Pisa, our first stop of the day.

We got out at Pisa and started looking around for some sort of map telling us where the Leaning Tower was; hopefully it was within walking distance of the station. We walked outside and there was a huge map right there. We looked at, found the station, found the Tower, and figured that basically all we had to do was walk straight until we coudn't go further, then turn left and walk til we were at the Tower. We made our way down the street and through a huge round-a-bout. We laughed the Ducati Mo-Ped we saw there too. We had to walk through two different outdoor shopping mall type streets. It was funny because they were playing Christmas music over the intercom/loudspeakers there. We crossed a river in between the two different shopping streets; Pisa seems like a pretty town. We made our left turn and continued til Chris was like "There it is." I hadn't even noticed it because it blended in with the surrounding buildings. That's about when we started to take a bunch of pictures. We got to the gate and attempted doing the "holding the Tower up" pictures; but they didn't come out too well. So we walked around to the other side. There was a little street market that we walked up and down checking out the souvineers they have there. They had these boxers with only the same (area from the statue David on them. On the way back toward the Tower we were able to get some good pictures of us pretending to hold the tower up. (chris / john). Chris stopped off to get a sandwich and I got some gelati. Unfortunately my gelati tasted just like sorbet, meaning the gelati I had in Spain tasted better in my opinion. After eating and a few more pictures we decided to see how much it would cost to climb the Tower; 15Euros... no thanks. So we started walkin back toward the station. Chris tried to get money out of pretty much every ATM we passed; for some reason it was rejecting his card even though it worked in Rome and London. Chris picked up some McDonald's from the station and we hoped on the train to Florence.

So this train ride was pretty slow, these seats on this train were much less comfortable than the last train. There were two Florence stops aparently, and as we started to pack up or the first one the lady told us that it was the next one - so we thanked her and waited til the stop after it. Once in Florence we had to figure out where to stay. We walked around the station and asked about the next train out in the morning to Lugano. The first lady we talked to said we were going to have to pay 32Euros to take the train. Well we weren't down to pay that much money for the train, so we told her we'd pick a new desitination and come back. So we went from the ticket booth to the information window. The guy at this window told us the trains we needed to take, and also told us that we wouldn't have to pay for anything because our pass would cover it. Now that we had that covered we decided to look for any information on hostels in Florence. A guy randomly walked up to us and asked where we were staying that night. We told him that we would probably be in a hostel, and he started to tell us that we should stay at The Hotel David. He then opened up a map to show us where it was and what sites were around; I was more interested in the map than the hotel. He gave us the flier, which of course had the map on it, after trying for quite a while to sell us on the two-star Hotel David.
We left the train station and decided to walk around and see the sites while we were there in Florence. We walked towards the Duomo as best we could tell from our free poorly drawn map. Well we found a Cathedral and Pillar that I'll have to look up to know what they were and also a street market (second one of the day) that we walked down. We stopped at one of the leather shops when the shop owner started talking to us. It turned out that he was from San Diego. He then decided to go on and on about how he'd backpacked through Europe when he was in College. He said "Yeah, you put a bunch of shit you don't need in your bag. I bet you don't need half your clothes in there. And then you go all around with a guide book that says 'See Europe'... It should be called 'Go Fuck Yourself'". I swear this guy was one of the most pesimistic people we met. First off, we were very obviously backpacking through Europe, so I don't know how you expect to make a sale by putting us down. Second, I think I'd trust an American less selling stuff on the street, than I would an Italian or Indian. The American would know that you would be more likely to trust them more and buy from them. After leaving that guy we made it the Duomo. It was pretty amazing, the colors and style of architecture they used were really pretty. We took a bunch of pictures and then realized we had no idea where the statue David was at. I heard a couple British girls talking so I went and asked them; they were happy to give us directions.
We wandered down the street trying to find this "long line" that we were told we would see. We walked too far and spent some time trying to figure out what building it was in. We found a random courtyard that we stopped in to take some pictures. After that we found a souvineer stand and flipped through a guide book real quick to figure out what building the statue David was in. Turns out that we passed it on the street we were just on...because we were looking for a line where there wasn't one. We go in the building and it turned out that we were allowed in the Museum area because of our backpacks, Damn... we would have both been down to pay and see the statue. I figured that at least I saw one one of the duplicates in England...
So now that we were pretty much done in Florence we decided to head back to the station and catch a train to Milan, this would save us time in the morning.
So we got on the first train to Bologna we could find. It was a reservation train, and we didn't have any but figured we'd take our chances. We sat down... in someone elses seats before we realized that they were reserved. So we wandered around a bit to try and find seats that weren't already taken. We ended up having to stand the hour and twenty trip to Bologna. We were approached for our tickets by the train guy, and we showed our passes. It turns out that our passes didn't cover that train, but he wouldn't charge us. He told us to change at the next stop, and he told us which trains our pass worked for.

So we arrived in Bologna. What's in Bologna? We couldn't get a bologna sandwich; we looked. We found a sandwich shop near the station and got panini for dinner. Sadly I had a better panini in London's Leister Square. We walked up and down the nearby streets, but had no idea if there was anything worth seeing. So we headed back to the station. There was a train to Florence leaving in four minutes, that was delayed ten. So we hurried to the platform to try and catch it. There was an information guy on the platform, so we double checked with him that we could ride that train; he said that we could.

This train trip we shared a cabin with a girl from Rome, I think it was Rome. She was really nice, she spoke really great English. She thought we must be English because we spoke very clearly and she had no trouble understanding us at all. We said we weren't, which meant it was just that Chris and I use very few slang words and enunciate everything we say. We talked to her about school and where we were from. She told us a little bit about what she'd done and where she had studied. She's been to Mexico, Barcelona, and London to study - and she's only 19. She did seem to be gettin irritated at how long the train ride was taking though. It took about 25 minutes longer then scheduled to arrive to Milan; only 15 if you take out the late arrival in Bologna.

So, this was Milan our fourth city of the day. It was around 10ish by now and we had no idea where we were staying for the night. So we started walking around the streets by the station trying to find a hostel or cheap hotel. We didn't really find either, so we decided to find an internet cafe that was still open. Well we found one that cost us 1Euro/15min; what a ripoff. But we had to find a place to stay, so I paid the money. I got online only to realize that there was only ONE hostel listed for all of Milan. I guess not many people venture to Milan. So I wrote the address and what appeared to be a Metro stop listing and headed back to the Metro with Chris. When we got underground we ran into another backpacker who asked if we were going to the hostel. "The only one?" I replied. After that we all talked the whole way to the hostel. This damn place was not only far away, but pretty hidden too. Though we finally did find it and went to check in. Not only is this the ONE hostel in Milan, but it's also the only hostel I've been in that requires you to be a hostel member. Since we're not members we had to pay 3Euros extra for the night, and at that point 3Euros was no big deal. So we got checked in, made it our rooms, then tried to find the cafeteria or food room. There was a vending machine where I bought a TINY can of Iced Tea for 60Euro-cents. After that I went to bed and crashed. The end of a long day, with only about six hours of sleep before waking tomorrow.