Day 6 - Fiorenze and Pisa

Today we got up early so we could visit Pisa with a short stop in Florence along the way!

We caught the metro to the Termini, and once there attempted to find our train. Apparently, the train name listed on your ticket means absolutely nothing which led to all kinds of fun trying to find our train. Eventually with about ten minutes before our train left we asked someone to help us find our train and then headed towards it. Of course we were in the second to last carriage so had to walk quite a while. We got on with about five minutes to spare.

Off we went to Florence. On the way, Ali fell asleep as she was still feeling awful, Auke and Titus looked at the scenery and the girls watched on Auke’s phone.

Before long, we arrived in Florence. From the station, we had about half an hour to get to Cathedral 1Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) for our climb to the top. We grabbed a quick snack from a vending machine and walked to the Duomo.

The plan was that Ali and Titus were going to stay down the bottom due to Ali having a high temp etc, and the girls and Auke were going to climb the 460+ steps to the top. However, once inside it went straight into the climb, so we ended up all doing it. As the staircase is very narrow, the pram had to stay behind so Auke carried Titus up! He even gave him a bottle on the way.

The girls had heaps of fun climbing up the stairs. Once up the top, we had the most spectacular view of Florence. It was breathtaking! At the top we had a break and the girls had a snack. We then made our way back down the stairs.

At the bottom, we looked for some lunch. Auke got some pizza and the girls and Ali got a fruit smoothie. Ali wanted to try what Italian pizza tasted like so she had some but unfortunately her nose was so blocked she couldn’t taste anything.

We had a little bit of time before our next train so we did a bit of souvenir shopping. At one of the souvenir shops, Lana managed to spill her smoothie all over the street right in front of them. People in Italy seem to be really nice and understanding when it comes to children. We tried to clean it up but the lady got down on her hands and knees and cleaned it up which was really nice! She kept saying not to worry about it.

Florence seems to have some amazing shops! We wished we had more time to look at them. They had an entire store dedicated to Magnums- in this store you chose a Magnum icecream, and then chose different toppings to go on it. We were disappointed we had already eaten!

We also found a Lindt store!! We all chose a few chocolates each to try.

Too soon, we had to head back to the train station for the next part of our journey - to Pisa. On the train ride Lana did school work, Titus slept and Mila just played.

Before long we arrived in Pisa! Pisa is not at all what you would expect. Google makes it sound like it’s a little town in the middle of nowhere. Really, it’s a massive place with heaps of shops!

We walked approx 20-30 minutes and finally we arrived at the tower. The tower looks amazing in real life! It is breathtaking! Also it is massive! Sadly we didn’t have time to climb the tower, but we made sure to take some photos in front of it!

Of course we attempted the obligatory photo of holding up the tower - because we were in a rush we didn’t have time to perfect it. It’s funny looking around because everyone is standing there with their hands in the air having their photo taken!

By this stage, we had to rush back to make our train back to Rome. We quickly grabbed some pizza on the way for dinner, which we ate when we got to the station while we waited for our train. We then boarded the train for our 3 hour journey home.

Once at home, we put the kids to bed and finally got to see our very first Roman sunset - usually we had crashed each night from jetlag before we got to see the sun set because it doesn't set till around 9.00pm.

Auke headed out to do some groceries. The shops were closed though, so he came home empty- handed!

We then went to sleep to the sounds of drilling, furniture moving and banging.