Florence, or as the Locals Call it 'Firenze'

Our next stop on our European Adventure was Florence!

Once again we were staying at a campground just outside of the city itself (the cheapest option possible) but since we arrived really early we dropped our bags off and headed back to the train station to head to Pisa (gotta get a good days worth of travel on our EuroRail passes!).

What was supposed to be a 45 minute train ride soon turned into a 1.5 hour train ride because one of the doors on the train got stuck open...and then stuck shut... sigh.

Finally, we arrived in Pisa, which seems to be a town based solely on one giant leaning tower!

I must admit the Leaning Tower of Pisa is pretty cool - it is actually on the biggest lean and it looks like it leans even more in real life! Even the door you enter to climb up it from the base is on a massive angle!

As much as it was highly amusing watching nearly every person that walked past us attempt to do one of those 'pushing the tower upright' perspective photos I was not at all keen to give that a go - so here is our version of a perspective photo: Michael's finger pushing the tower over haha!

By the time we headed back to our campsite it was getting pretty late and we decided to stop off at Piazzale Michelangelo - which happened to be about 100m away from our campsite! 

The views over Florence are pretty amazing, although my camera doesn't really do the greatest job of taking night time shots - it looked so much better in person! Since this plaza is dedicated to Michelangelo, there is also a bronze replica of the Statue of David - since we didn't really plan on paying to go see one statue in a tiny museum we considered this to be a good enough sighting of this statue.

The next day we decided to head on a tour of the Siena and the Chianti wine region in the hills of Tuscany. On our way we stopped again at Piazzale Michelangelo (which happened to be pretty much on our way to everything) to check out the views during the day. 

This is probably one of the best view points we have seen so far because it's close enough that you can see everything in detail but far enough away that you feel like your on top of the city.

Florence is a pretty gorgeou city from this view - all the buildings have red roof tops and it has a very old world charming look about it. 

After this we jumped on a tour bus to check out what Tuscany had to offer!

Our first stop was a winery in the Chianti wine region of Tuscany called Poggio Amorelli. The Chianti wine region is famous in Italy (and probably many other parts of the world) for producing Chianti Classico and Chianti red wines - these are amazing!

This is the best wine tasting we have ever had! We tasted 5-6 different wines, as well as several types of salami, some cheeses, truffle (expensive!!!), several types of oils with bread and balsamic vinegar. The food was paired with the wine and really did compliment it! We also got a shot of grappa at the end, it was strong but not too bad - Michael actually loved that and has wanted more ever since! 

 The black rooster (above) is featured on many Chianti Classico wines, it is a symbol of the Chianti Classico Wine Consortium and means the wine is genuine and of good quality, the owner of the winery seemed very proud of the rooster label being on his wines. 

Outside the winery we enjoyed beautiful views of the rolling hills of Tuscany. This is a really beautiful part of Italy, it is full of winerys and beautiful countryside.

Vineyards as far as the eye can see is our kind of paradise!

After I was sufficiently tipsy from all the wine and a shot of grappa we headed for the fortress of Monteriggioni, this was a small medieval village that was originally built to defend the city of Siena from Florence (sounds like these two were at war a lot back in the day). Below is us at the entrace of this small medieval town.

Now it is a tiny walled in village that has a tiny church, a small village and plaza, some wineries and some cafes and restaurants - apparently some people even still live inside its walls.

As you can see they also still have knights (don't worry there wasn't a person in there, I checked!)

We visited one of the tiny wineries inside the fortress and sampled some more wines and some more salamis and truffle. The tasting was in a tiny underground cellar that was filled with wines, cheeses, salami and other spreads. 

 Once again the wine was delicious - we always want to buy some but it either means we have to drink it straight away or find a way to carry it around in a backpack for a lengthy period of time which is not really possible. The owner was really sweet and spoke about his wines and which foods they were best eaten with before providing us with samples - yum!

After consuming more then enough wine and wandering around the fortress for a while we jumped back on the bus and headed for Siena. 

Upon our arrival some of the most ridiulous drama I have ever witnessed unfolded. We happened to be heading to dinner in Siena of the day of the Palio de Siena, a famous horse race which I will explain more about later. Our tour guide had told us that we were lucky to be visiting on this day as this race only happens twice a year. We were supposed to be having dinner in the square where the horse race is held - giving some of the tour participants the idea that we would be watching the race. What was actually happening is that we were going on a one hour walking tour of Siena (as the square was inaccessible due to the race) and having dinner in the square post-race. Well, I have never seen a bunch of people (about half of the tour group) kick up such a stink - they cracked the absolutley sads! Our first hour or so in Siena was spent with these spoilt uppity tourists cracking the shits at the poor tour guide who didn't know what to do. After what seemed like the longest, most pointless argument of all time the psycho tourists were all herded off somewhere and the rest of us normal people left to go on the walking tour - there was only 8-10 people left so it was kind of nice!

Finally we could begin our (now very short) walking tour. We started in a central plaza (below picture, top left), which is decorated in 17 different flags to represent the 17 different districts within Siena, which the locals take very seriously. As we walked through Siena we noticed that each district was decorated with their flags - very patriotic - this was all to do with the horse race that was happening! The Palio de Siena is a famous horse race (known to be the most dangerous in the world), which is held in the Piazza de Campo in Sience on two days each year. Each of the districts has a horse which competes in this race - pride is at stake and the winning district celebrates long into the  night.

The above photos show the aftermath of the race - the horses run around the outside of the plaza, closest to the buildings, on hard dirt that is spread over the cobblestones a few days before the race. There are mattresses put around the outside of the race track to supposedly protect the jockeys hah! Most of the day is spent in anicipation of the race, which only lasts for a few minutes (3 laps of this small square!), there are parades and pagents and all involved are dressed traditionally - it's amazing that such an ancient tradition has survived completely in tact for such a long time (since the 1700's).

As soon as the race is over, everyone from the district that wins goes straight to the church to pray before lively celebrations, music and parades begin - what a crazy tradition!

These photos are of the square at night - it was filled with people enjoying the day and night (I'm guessing it's a public holiday) and the bottom photo is of the winning team parading through the streets late at night. It was actually really fun to experience the craziness of this day as it means so much to the people of Siena. 

Unfortunately for the poor tour guide, it seemed like everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. Our bus didn't show up and we were left to kinda wander the streets/wait for our bus for several hours. We were supposed to be home at 11:30pm but we didn't even leave Siena until then - fortunately our tour guide was of the attitude that alcohol can solve anything and as you can see it sure helped. 

It ended up being a really long night, we got home at about 1am and unforunately for us there was no more public transport running so we had to walk home to our campsite (about 40 minutes) - I am suprised I didn't fall asleep half way there. 

Our next day was spent exploring Florence, finally! It was Michael's birthday but he pretty much wanted to pretend it wasn't happening!

We visited the Ponte Vecchio - above. This is a medieval bridge famous for still having shops built all the way along it, I think it was originally butchers but now the shops are jewellers and art dealers - very fancy and upmarket. Apparently this is the oldest bridge in Florence and the only bridge that wasn't destroyed by the Germans in WWII - legend has it that Hitler himself chose to spare this bridge because he thought it was the most beautiful in Florence (this is what the locals say but I don't know how true it actually is...).

We also went for a walk on the Ponte Santa Trinata - the old looking bridge in this group of photos that doesn't have buildings on it! It had to be reconstructed after bombings in WWII but it still one of the oldest bridges in Florence and remains true to its original design. Below is me walking across the Ponte Vecchio.

There are statues everywhere in Florence, above is Michael at the Neptune Fountain (it's pretty exciting when we actually know who someone is!) in the Piazza della Signoria - apparently the people of Florence didn't like it when it was first built (like the Eiffel Tower) but it is famous now!

We also strolled around the Florence Cathedral, which is a really unique looking church compared to most of the churches we have seen in Europe (which all seem to look like minature or varied versions of Notre Dame). The outside of the church was covered in stripy concrete and intricate patterns and features huge domes (which can been seen throughout the city).

For Michael's birthday he wanted an epic picnic dinner so we went and bought A LOT of supplies, fruits, cheeses, meats, biscuits and of course drinks to cheers with! It's fair to say there was a lot of cheers-ing happening!

Well that sums up our time in Florence - we have since headed to Croatia (today it is raining... suprise...) but will defininetly be back to Italy to check out the more Southern Regions!