Sometimes i feel like throwin my hands up in the air, i know i can count on you. Sometimes i feel like sayin lord i just dont care, you’ve got the love to see me through.
The Backpacking Battlers consider themselves to be pretty knowledgable blokes but when they found out this city in the Tuscana (Tuscany) province was not the hometown to Florence + The Machine, they both got a shock and a half. They were also stunned after the news was broken to them that the statue of David was not in fact the real, but a replica. It’s a damn outrage, bloody Howard. Jaws on the floor when they found out about the bubbler they were first about to drink out of, offered cold sparkling mineral water. Out of those three bits of local knowledge, it was the sparkling mineral water bubbler that made them both go camping in the pants. For perksy, it was “argueably the best thing i’ve seen and experienced in Italy so far.”
We arrived by train to Florence where we met a Canadian school teacher, Miss Amanda, who helped us find ingredients and cook a stir fry for din dins. When i say helped, i mean she chopped some stuff up and then watched in amusement as we tried to figure everything out.
After dinner we walked around Florence and were given a guided tour by two seventeen year old German girls, one who had been to Florence before so knew all the good places. These two girls were staying in our hostel and still have one year left of school. They are on their summer holiday break and their parents let them go traveling by themselves for a couple of weeks. Although still amazed at how chilled their parents are about letting their daughters travel at such a young age, this seems to be quiet a common occurance in Europe we’ve noticed.
The next day (6th August), The Wizard and i ran into Inez and Claire-Ellen, the girls we met in Mykonos and then ran into them again in Ios, at Florence train station. They were doing a day trip to Pisa. We told them they should come to Sienna with us and then head to Pisa afterwards.
We arrived in Sienna and because it was a Sunday, there wasn’t a lot going on. Inez, Claire-Ellen, Eddie and I had some lunch, had a look and walk around and then got on the train to Pisa. There wasn’t much to do at all in Pisa except look a a tower which was poorly built or designed (not sure which but probably both) by some dodgey builders or engineers. If something like that happened in Australia, A Current Affair would be onto it instantaneously under the title ‘Shonky Builders’ or ‘Shonky Engineers’, ‘-who is really qualified at their job?’
All of us did the classic tourist shots. My best was me laying down and taking a photo from an angle that made it look like the tower was my appendage. Was laughing at the schoolboy humour immaturely the whole time i was taking it. I still laugh when i look at it.
The four of us returned to Florence in time for dinner where we sat down and made an order at a restaurant. The waiter asked if we wanted any drinks and after declining because they were expensive, we were alerted by anothet waitress that in order for us to be able to eat in their restaurant, it was a requirement that we order drinks. After about five minutes of arguing, we got up and left. That was absolute bullshit. It pissed me off so much that the business was so eager to get an extra couple of euros out of us each that they were willing to sacrifice around forty euros collectively for dinner. The owner of that restaurant is a blood idiot. We ended up getting take away pizza and eating it on the front steps of a church before saying goodbye to the girls who we might be catching up with again in Venice for their last night and our first night.
Eddie and i left Florence around 9am to get the train north to Cinque Terre.