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Trip Start May 19, 2008 Previous
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  Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
Sunday, June 1, 2008

We had our first day without classes on Sunday, so we had the chance to take another day trip.  When most people were staying up late partying the night before, my roomates and I went to bed early so we could wake up early and go to Pisa for the day.  We went to the station early in the morning and bought our tickets.  After we got our tickets from the self-service station, we find out that the train station employees are striking, and a lot of the trips are cancelled.  Of course, our train was one of them.  Everyone was trying to figure out what was going on and how to get where we needed to go, and finally someone was nice enough to explain that our tickets would be good for any of the other trips to Pisa also.  The next train ride an hour later was not cancelled, so we got on that one.  Luckily, we were early enough to all get seats, although not together.  Many people were standing, and crammed in like sardines.  In a little over an hour, we arrived at Pisa, and walked across the city to see the leaning tower

amber and I on the train ride

.  Pisa also has a Duomo (big church) beside the leaning tower, so we took lots of pictures of that too.  After our picture extravaganza, we went to find a place to eat lunch, and found a nice little place to eat outside under a canopy.  We had some of the best pizza in Italy so far.  Yes, we had pizza in Pisa.  On the way back to the train station, we stopped at a few stores that were open to shop, but didn't find anything that caught our eye.  When we returned, we found that our train to Livorgno was cancelled also.  Amber L and Rachel wanted to go back since there was a train to Florence leaving in a few minutes, but Amber B and I wanted to make the most of our day, and decided to wait for the next train.  Rather than waiting at the station, we went back out to the city, and got to see some of the old ruins of a wall and castle that were still standing.  But we only had an hour, so we hurried back to the station.  We reached Livorgno and walked to the sea.  It was a little farther than we had planned, and we were hoping for a beach, but it ended up being just a huge port.  There were boats everywhere, but it was still a beautiful scene.  We were too tired to keep walking to actually find a beach, and so we decided to head back.  We caught a bus back to the station, and again had to wait an hour to catch the next train, since our train was cancelled.  This time, we couldn't possibly walk any further, so we decided just to wait at the station.  We played pen hockey with a bottle cap on a picnic table as we waited for our train to keep us entertained

the tower

.  We Finally got back to Florence, again in a sardine packed train, and limped home to nurse our blisters and aching feet.  But wait, on our way home, we past a carnival-type set up in the park near our hotel (ok, we thought it was near our hotel, but it turned out to be a longer walk than we would like when our feet hurt so bad).  We passed by, and went back to get our roomate Amber L. and went back to the carnival.  It turned out to be some kind of European food festival type place.  Different countries had a booth with their specialty foods to buy.  I had a streudal from Austria and a Perogie from somewhere else. It was delicious.  Tired, and in pain, we went back to our hotel, but somehow got lost on the way back, and ended up walking more than necessary.  Nevertheless, we finally reached our hotel, and crashed.  We all slept very good that night.

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me leaning in front of the tower	church	eating Pizza in Pisa	in front of ancient ruins
old ruins	view of the city	more ruins	me in Livorno
playing hockey waiting for a train	serious game

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