We got up early Saturday morning to travel to Lucca on a 7am train that stopped in Pisa, where we would have to take a separate train to Lucca. We had no problems getting to the station and taking the first train, and we were pretty pleased with our success thus far. We were on time and ready for our train to Lucca, but as we got off the train in Pisa, we were bombarded with lots of students walking around the station. First we thought, "well, that's understandable, Pisa is a college town, so they're probably going home for the holiday weekend," but as we continued to walk around, more and more of these college-aged Italians were dressed up in costumes. We then thought to ourselves, "Ok, this is kind of weird, Halloween was a couple of days ago, was there a really big party that everyone is just now going home from?" A little weirded out by the number of people wearing costumes and feeling very aware that we were pretty much the only ones not in costumes, we kept walking towards our train because as long as we got to our next train, all would be fine. But of course as we got closer to our train to Lucca, the density of people in costumes became larger and larger, until we arrived at our platform to a train filled to the brim with costumed people, so many that the police were kicking some people off! Now we had a problem. For a couple of minutes we stood dumbfounded at the platform, unsure of what was going on and what we were going to do. We still had no idea why there were all of these people in costumes and where they could possibly be going. What we did know was there was absolutely no way we were getting on our train. As we were deciding what to do, we went to check the board stating departures and arrivals to see if we could figure out what was going on. As we glanced at the various notices on the board, we saw a sign saying (in Italian), "from Oct. 31st to Nov. 3rd: Comics and Games Festival: Lucca 2013." Ohhhh, it was all starting to make sense now. But honestly, in all of the places in Italy, this massive comics festival had to be in Lucca, and it had to be this weekend! We thought nothing big happens in Lucca, and that's exactly why we wanted to go there! As we saw the masses of people waiting to get onto the next trains to Lucca, we figured we weren't getting there anytime soon. Unfortunately, we gave up on going to Lucca because we knew it was going to take us too long to get there, and it wasn't going to be what we had wanted to visit it for: a small, quiet, out of the way, non-touristy town. So we cut our losses (only about 10€ each) and moved on to Florence in hopes that we would find another time to visit Lucca. Luckily, we caught a break by easily getting from Pisa to Florence and walking out of the station right up to Santa Maria Novella immediately lifted our spirits.
Although we didn't see a lot of what Florence
has to offer, our "preview" to our weeklong stay at New Year's
went perfectly. As we walked onto piazza Santa Maria Novella we quickly felt
how Florence gives off a totally different vibe than Rome. Rome is bigger
and more chaotic than Florence, and Florence gives off this
unique and indescribable charm. It never seemed too difficult to get around and
the streets are lined with shops and venders, all selling leather products. And
we saw how the Duomo is indeed the one and only Duomo! It is massive and
majestic, and it looks just as astonishing at night as during the day! There were tons of tourists around to prove its popularity. It took 10 minutes
to find our friends who were already there and we were literally 50ft from each
other! We walked around the Duomo and explored the many streets of shops that
also held some hidden jewels of sculpture we recognized from high school Art
History.
One cultural tradition that differs between Florence and
Rome pertains to how they run dinner. In Rome, restaurants are open pretty much
all day to cater to its thousands of tourists. On the other hand, we learned
that many restaurants in Florence close after lunch and don't
open until 7pm for dinner. We usually abide by this unspoken rule and eat
dinner between 7 and 7:30pm, but on this day all of us were so tired and hungry
that we just wanted something to eat, but we couldn't find anyplace open. Finally
we saw a little bar with a couple of families inside so we thought it would be a perfect rest stop. When we sat down we soon realized something was wrong when they didn't
give us menus. The waiter came over and told us they didn't serve any food
until 7pm (we hadn't realized it was only 6:20!), while the families already in the bar were staring at us. This was
probably the first time we felt like real tourists in an awkward situation.
Thankfully, the bar had some lasagna ready to serve and they let us have some early (partially we think because they felt bad for
us). After dinner, we walked around a little more and stopped for some gelato because, after all, Florence claims to be the birthplace of gelato, so we
couldn't not have any!
Our four hour pit stop in Pisa was the perfect amount of
time to see everything we wanted to see (mainly the Field of Miracles, which
houses the basilica, the baptistery and, of course, the famous leaning tower).
We spent lots of time taking clever pictures with the tower (which is actually
harder than you would think), and we went to an Italian mass at the basilica
before grabbing lunch and hopping back on the train for our last ride back to
Rome. In all of its craziness, this weekend was a wonderful trip, and we
hope we got all of our bad luck out of the way before our future travels!
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