On Friday we were up early to go to Florence for the
day. Janine, her husband Lloyd and Holly
came back last night so after an early morning coffee at the bar in town, they
dropped us off at the station for our 2 hour train ride to Florence. Once we arrived we re-energised with yet
another coffee and then after a brief stroll around the town we decided to get
in line for the Uffuzi gallery. So many
people had raved about how brilliant it was so we thought the hour’s queuing
would surely be worth it. We were wrong. Not that we don’t appreciate a painting or
two of the Messiah and his friends, but this was the entire subject matter of
the exhibition (and it’s a very, very large building!) I don’t know if we were just unfortunate and
happen to visit during “Jesus Week” but after an hour and a half it all got too
much so we left and continued our sight-seeing.
After a few hours we headed back to the station to catch the
train back to Bagni di Lucca and decided that our summing up of Florence is as
follows: Over-rated, too many people and
smells really bad.
The next morning it was time to leave Crasciana and head to
Pisa where we’d spend the night before our flight to Barcelona on Sunday. We needed to change trains at Lucca and
unfortunately the Rail Europe website talks absolute rubbish so we were stuck
there for 2 hours waiting for our connection to Pisa. So, we went for a coffee and Nick did what
any 28 year old man with 2 hours to kill would do – he made a lego koala.
Arrived in Pisa at 2pm and once we’d found the place we’d
booked for the night though AirBnB (people with spare rooms renting them out
for cheapish rates), we headed off to that wonky tower we’d heard so much
about. While there we obviously had to
take the obligatory comedy photo. There
were actually people queuing up to get into the best position for the
shot, with wives and partners shouting
at them that they were too far to the left/right, generally not doing it right.
I was obviously not one of them.
After checking out the tower and surrounding sights we walked through the town, which incidentally also smelled bad in places. I mentioned this to Nick and he gave me a brief lesson on the history of old Italian sewage systems, which I don’t remember asking for but was obviously so happy to receive.
The next day we went for a walk through some gardens within
an old fortress and then hunted down a place to go for lunch. Our hunt was rewarded as we ate the best meal
of our trip so far (apart from maybe the pizza at the “Best Pizzas in Italy”
place). Our menu was Rabbit Ravioli in a
White Ragu, Caprese Salad and Grilled Vegetables….mmmmmm. We are already planning our next trip to Pisa
just so we can go back there!
After lunch there was just time for quick sunbathe at the
tower then it was time to catch the train to the airport to fly to Barcelona.
Our suitcase has finally given up so we
bought one for 18 euros from a Chinese man near the airport. It’s definitely not the best quality but
we’re hoping it’ll do the job for the next month or so. We arrived at Barcelona El-Prat just before
9pm and took the train to Sitges where we were met by one half of our new set
of workaway hosts, Andrew. Back at the
house we had some dinner and then went to bed ready to start work the next
day.
After breakfast the next morning we came to the decision
that we would like to leave here as soon as possible. Without going into too much detail, (because
our blog is becoming just so damn popular that you never know who may pass the
word on to them …) the place is really unclean and Andrew is extremely moody
and intolerant. We have begun to look
for other workaway placements but as we can’t really afford to stay anywhere that
charges money, we are stuck here until someone wants us!
Anyway, we spent the morning gardening and fixing various
things and then after lunch we went into Sitges. Here’s Nick enjoying himself on the beach :-
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