Europe 2011: Day 6

Monday was the first move of our trip. If I were to thing that I found most stressful during the planning of this trip, it was trying to decide how many places we could reasonably visit before we felt like we were being stretched and unable to rest and relax. We arrived on Friday night and were very ready to move to Bologna on Monday morning though.

We ate our last breakfast at the Aemelia hotel and said our goodbyes. We loved this hotel despite the out-of-the way location. We bought a first class ticket to Florence, got on the train on the wrong end, and ended up sitting in second class the entire hour-long trip. What a waste! It went really fast for me though because I was listening to The Hunger Games.

When we arrived at our hotel, extremely conveniently located right next to the train station, we were able to check in early. This hotel is our splurge location of the trip, and it reminds me of the W due to it's modern and quite fancy interior. Wait until you see the "princess chair" in the lobby. It would be a perfect photo prop!

After dropping off our bag and getting settled in, we decided to hop a train to Pisa. How cool is that? It was a one hour train ride and a perfect afternoon trip.

Pisa!



TH and I were both very impressed by the piazza dei miracoli. Doesn't he look good in his new shirt?


We ate at yet another sub-par place, bought some gelato, and walked over to the piazza of miracles. We didn't go inside anything because the wait to climb the tower was hours and hours, but we did take plenty of cheesy tourist style pictures of the two of us holding up the tower :)

We also lucked out with a fellow photographer, who when asked if he would take our picture, walked us over to a spot with awesome light and used the manual settings with ease. Unfortunately I dislike the pictures because they made me realize how bloated I look already. I don't want to undo all the hard work I put in before we left!

After we got back from Pisa I went out for a run. The sidewalks are way too small for there to be runners out (I was constantly stepping into the road to get around people), but it felt so good! Another good thing about staying so close to the train station is that I never have to worry about getting lost and not being able to find my hotel - I just need to ask what direction the train station is and run toward that!

I showered and we headed over to Trattoria I Due G for yet another sad, sad meal. Don't worry though, things started looking up in the food department thanks to Twitter and a little bit of luck!