JULY 25th
PISA! Come for the tower, stay for an hour!
and i mean that literally... Pisa is a small town (popn 92000) that got lucky. a dude called Pisano builds a tower on some shitty land and makes a town famous forever! it's an amazing thing to see and truly only one of a kind. not just the lean, but the design of the building is beautiful. the nearby cathedral is also nice. cost 15euro to climb the tower, so we declined ourselves that luxury. but Pisa don't have much else going for it! we caught the 10:37 train (left at 10:47) from Florence this morning, spent some time in Pisa and now we're on the 2pm train back to Florence. once we arrived in Florence, the heavens decided to open up again! and for the third time in two days BOOM! thunder and lightning! maybe the Roman gods are displeased with us! waited in station for a bit for it to slacken off then made a dash for our hotel. at the exit to the station there were black guys and arab guys selling umbrellas! guess it was inclement weather for rip off bags and sunglasses, so why not pimp some brollies! The main tourist strips in Florence are plagued by these guys selling fake louis vuitton, gucci etc bags as well as sunglasses.
the bags and sunnies seem to be sold mostly by black guys, prints of famous artwork by arab guys, little toy electric Smart cars that drive around, flash their lights, open their doors and play a short sample of annoying chinese music over and over (i want one!) are sold by chinese guys and then there are sometimes younger guys (maybe european of some sort or perhaps brazilian) that sell little train carriages made up of letters to form your name... they are anywhere tourists are likely to be. there are BIG signs around the main shopping areas of Florence in english, italian, french and spanish stating that purchasing fake goods is illegal and can impose a fine of up to 10000euros!but these guys seem to have some kinda "understanding" with the cops. there is a big police presence in Flo - well it seems so around the main tourist strips anyway. they'll constantly be driving their little cars along the streets, even thru squares that are pedestrian only areas. and if you have a bunch of the hawkers along a street peddling their crap and a cop drives along, they quickly fold up their tables or bundle their bedsheet full of bags together into a sack and then just stand there until the cops leave the area. as soon as they're far enough away, out comes the merchandise again! if you stay in one area long enough, you'll see it happen over and over again. took a short video of one such event in action which i'll hopefully be able to post for your viewing pleasure at some stage!
had pasta with a wild boar meat sauce for dinner and then headed to Ponte Vecchio (the goldsmith's bridge) for more sunset action! tis the 31st of July and i'm trying to recall the events of the last few days!
JULY 26th
a morning of waiting. i think we got to the Uffizi Gallery at 845am with the belief that it opened at 9am. there was already a huge line and it actually opened at 815am! bout an hour later we entered Uffizi, which houses "the greatest collection of Italian and Florentine art in existance." the interior was beautiful and there were definitely a lot of paintings that even an uneducated buffoon like myself recognized. Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Allegory of Spring were great.
SIDENOTE: on the train to Naples at present from Rome with a hangover. writing ability may be at a low...


towards the end of the gallery - did a running tour of a fair amount of rooms - there was a da Vinci show case that i stopped to look at but Jee moved on ahead. i watched a video explaining the Vitruvian man for a few minutes then thought i'd better hurry up and catch Jee. went along the corridors and came to the gift shop. scanned the area but couldn't see Jee so i went on thru to the exit. went outside into the blazing heat but couldn't find her anywhere. thought that she must still be inside so i headed back in to be confronted by a Nazi midget in the form of a female security guard. she said i couldn't come back in to the gallery once i'd left. said that i was looking for my wife and showed her my ticket, but she wasn't having a bar of it. i know it's for security reasons, but she could've strip searched me and let me in, but no. so i stood about a metre inside the door way so that i could get a view down the hall from where the gift shop exits. 40 minutes of standing and waiting later she pops her head round the corner from the gift shop. she'd been waiting in there for an hour for me! but she'd been sitting on a seat so i hadn't seen her when i passed thru.

a bit of looking around at shops before we grabbed a take away pizza from the restaurant outside our hotel. they never cut pizzas in italy, well that we've come across so far anyway. so we sat on the steps of St Lorenzo's Basilica and tore our pizza so shreds. it was fantastic! jee and i were discussing pizzas and i said that i think i prefered american style pizzas before because of the variety of flavours and toppings but italian pizzas are more based on simplicity and they are absolutely delicious!we headed to the Ponte Vecchio again. the sun had already set, but there were a trio of minstrels doing their thing on the bridge. they were quite talented and we decided to buy one of their CDs for the memories! :-)