Under the Tuscan Sun

Friday:
I don't even know where to begin for this weekend. It was incredible! We left Lugano around 1 on Friday and got to Pistoia (a random small town in Tuscany) at 6:30. The hostel we stayed at was 20 minutes outside of town, out in the country and the only way to get there is by car. Luckily, our hostel had a shuttle service from the owner himself! Guido, a wealthy  man who used to make loads of wine, and now only makes olive oil, has a farm out in the country side with an infinity pool, 23 places for guests to stay, and the most incredible view ever. The hostel was $25 a night, and the 5 of us had this little house thing to ourself. When you walked in there was a door on the left and on the right and each one led to a kitchen, a bathroom, and 4 beds- basically it meant we were all spread out and there weren't any strangers with us, which was perfection! The first night we got there, Guido gave us welcome wine and we sat down at dinner with 3 other people, 2 Australian girls, and an Irishman. They were great company for us at the hostel because they were basically the only other people there!

Welcome Glass of Wine!

Guido's shuttle

Saturday:
We woke up early in the morning to begin our day of what we thought would be Lucca and Pisa. We got to the train station at 10 am to find out that the next train to Lucca was at 11, and we didn't want to stay in Pistoia for that amount of time, so we did what any rational person would do- jump on a train to Florence for a couple of hours! We had plans to do wine tasting at 5:30 that night so since we weren't planning on doing anything major, we had planned to have Guido pick us up at the train station at 2 so we could hang out by the pool for a little of bit. My first impression of Florence was that there were so many people there. Switzerland looks like a deserted country compared to the mass of people that was walking around that town! We picked up a map and started on our quick tour of Florence. After we saw the Duomo, we saw a couple famous plazzas, and then stumbled across the fake David and grabbed some pizza!

Duomo

Pizza and Calzone by the Duomo

After our quick sightseeing, our group split up. Two people decided to spend the rest of the day in Florence, while Shelayne, Claire, and I decided to go back to our quaint little town to lay by the pool and go wine tasting! The infinity pool in itself was an experience. It was beautiful and so relaxing and quiet, but the only downfall was we were required to wear swim caps that Guido gave us at arrival. They made for lovely pictures though!

I was the Yellow

 

We got to stay there with our Australian friends for a couple hours and then had to go get ready for wine tasting. As a bonus to wine tasting, we got to stop by the place where Leonardo da Vinci was born. The house was so anti-climactic. It was under construction and was just a giant brick building. After we saw it, Guido informed us that he doesn't believe it was the actual birthplace of Leonardo but rather a place that the town of Vinci made up to get tourists. His reasoning behind this was that he used to be an architect and he believes the house was built in the 800's while Leonardo was born in the 400's.. Quite the controversy!

All of us at wine tasting

At the Vineyards

Wine tasting in Italy consisted of going to one person's farm, and eating all their grapes and eating wine! So amazing! The harvesting didn't start until Sunday, but we were there Saturday so we got to pick grapes and eat them, even though we didn't get to see the wine actually being produced. The 6 of us and Guido then sat down at a table with cheese, ham, bread, bruschetta, cantaloupe, and 4 bottles of wine. We got to try all the different types of wine, and Guido explained the difference between each one and then the woman brought out dessert wine and we got to dunk biscotti in red wine and then drink this dessert wine that tasted like apple juice. It was so delicious! I was going to buy wine from that woman but Guido was very sure to point out that his wine was way better and I need only to buy his. Apparently there is a famous wine that comes from Tuscany that costs 100 euro a bottle, but Guido managed to steal some of these grapes once and now makes the wine for 10 euros per bottle! I bought a bottle of this wine (we tried it on the first night there) and he gave me an extra one. So mom and dad- there is some good wine coming back to the states! After that lovely evening, on the way back to Guido's farm we got to stop at a random castle in Vinci! It was completely dark so you couldn't see anything, but there was a sculpture of Leonardo's perfect man, which was cool to see.  

Another sunset in Tusacny

Castle in Vinci

Sunday: 

This day started out wonderfully, we got an early start and were ready to go to Lucca and Pisa. The three main travel goals were to see the marble walls of Lucca, and take a picture with the leaning tower of Pisa and of course make it home! 

One important thing about the region we were in is it is a very popular place for cyclists. There were so many hills and little towns and gorgeous views there were always hundreds of cyclists on the skinny mountain roads. Guido hated the cyclists as they believed they owned the road and they had the Saint of cyclists, San Baronto watching out for them. It was actually kind of scary to see how close Guido would get to the cyclists before he would find an opening and zoom past a couple of them and squeeze his way back into the pack! He definitely has had experience driving with the cyclists, but there were so many of them and we got stuck so many times behind them that we actually almost missed our train to Lucca! Something that frustrated me was that very few of the cyclists were wearing helmets. With the way Italians drive, and the cyclists not wearing helmets, I am scared for the number of accidents that happen on this road! One last thing about that, I maybe saw 3 women out of the hundreds of bicyclists, so I decided my mom needs to get to Italy and show these men that women can ride too! 

Loads of cyclists!

After we barely caught our train, we got to Lucca at 11:30 and began to walk around the town. Back in the day, Lucca built giant walls of marble to keep enemies out, but when enemies never came, they just left up the walls and built a city inside the walls. 

Marble castle in Lucca

We dropped our bags off at a place inside the walls and began to walk around. We got to see a couple churches, a market, some plazzas and ate wonderful kebabs for lunch! The only issue with Lucca, was there were a lot of birds! 

Where I ate lunch due to too many birds
on the church steps!

After lunch we bought some bread to split between the five of us that was supposed to be bread that was famous to Lucca, but we couldn't eat it because it tasted like black licorice. Disgusting. It then started to rain, but not just rain, it poured. We had to make it back to the tourist information place where our bags were and to the bus station where we could take a bus to Pisa. Sprinting in the rain- so much fun. Not. 

We then took a 30 minute bus ride to Pisa so we could take the classic pictures holding up the tower. My favorite part of walking into the plazza where the tower is, was seeing all of the tourists with their hands sticking into the air to get their own pictures holding up the tower. It was priceless. 

Ever wonder what's behind the tower? 

I held up the tower!

We made it back to the bus station with plenty of time to spare, or so we thought, in order to get back to Switzerland at a reasonable hour. Then the panic struck- we figured out Tren Italia was striking. The man at the ticket counter laughed at us when we told him we needed to get to Switzerland and told us to go talk to information. After another 20 minute wait, the woman in information told us she could get us back to Lugano at 8:15 Monday morning (if we were willing to stay in the Milan train station between 1am and 5am).. That almost worked except our classes were at 8:30 and are 30 minutes away from the train station! We were not ready to give up hope, so we jumped on a bus to the airport to see if we could fly into Switzerland! The woman at the airport laughed at us too. Bummer. After throwing around many ideas, taking a private car to Lugano, spending the night in Milan, taking a train that would arrive at 5:30, or winging it, we decided to wing it! We noticed there was a bus to Florence leaving at 7:20 that night that would get us there around 8:30 in time for the strike to end at 9. We then looked up trains and saw if we got on a 9 o'clock train from Florence to Balogna, we could take a train from Balogna to Lugano that would get in at 5:30. Perfect. We bought our bus tickets, and our train ticket to Balogna (there were only first class seats available, but desperate times call for desperate measures!) When we got to Florence the train was a little late so we got some pizza for dinner, and then we got on the train! The train stopped in Balogna like it was supposed to, but we hopped off and saw that the next train we were going to take was cancelled! Claire ran over and asked some train dude if we could just hop back on and he said "sure, get on." Since we were already in the first class section we decided to just hop back onto first class and we learned a very important lesson- if there is a train strike in Italy, just hop on any train because they won't check tickets, and when you hop on- just jump into first class! The train took us to Milan but when we got there we were kind of at a dead end. We tried to see if there was a bus from Milan to Lugano, but it was too late for that (it was now 11) so we considered taking that 12:38 train from Milan to Chiasso, which is a small town south of Lugano. We would have gotten into Chiasso at 1:45am and had to hope for a taxi to be there that late on a Sunday morning. We figured that wasn't too safe of a bet so we just got a taxi in Milan and took it all the way to Lugano. Yes, it was expensive- but split between 4 people it was not nearly that bad and it was the cheapest option we truly had! After the hour-ish taxi ride we made it back to Lugano safe and sound at 12:45! Needless to say, I am kind of over Italy and their striking and plan to stay in Switzerland for awhile now!