So, I made it to Italy and it was as I had hoped. Landed in Pisa on Friday morning, having not slept Thursday due to the early flight, and went directly from the airport to the centre of Pisa to take a look at the leaning tower. We were greeted in Pisa by unrepenting rain and a swarm of Italian and Japanese tourists. It was a good way to open the weekend, however, the fact we were dragging about our luggage and getting soaked wasn’t the perfect scenario.
The girl I was with asked a young Italian if he could take a photo of us by the tower, and following this experience I came to the conclusion that young Italians are clearly not tech-savvy. Both photos were terrible. So I obviously cornered a Japanese tourist, who took an acceptable photo.
We caught the bus to Pisa Centrale station, and on the fourth attempt at trying to buy train tickets from a machine (the queue was depressingly long for the over-the-counter ticket desks) I succeeded, and for less than â¬6 each we had booked our train to Florence. Beat’s the £19 I paid for a Stansted Express ticket…
We had a quick coffee at the train station, and the cappucino served to me in one of those typical train station places was actually fabulously frothy, which bode well for the rest of the journey.
We ran to the platform indicated on the boards, and jumped on the train. After sitting their for a few minutes, and realising the train was supposed to have departed already, I asked somebody if we were on the correct train. No…it seems I was heading towards Livorno, which is pretty much the wrong way. One thing Italy isn’t good for is signs or instructions, that’s for sure.
Once on the correct train, I hoped that Florence would provide a more fulfilling experience than Pisa. Granted, the leaning tower is spectacular, but the rest of the town was village-esque, and offered nothing of interest.
We arrived in Florence at about 5pm, and our hotel was opposite the train station. We slept a couple of hours, before going out for a bite to eat. We found a nice Pizzeria Ristorante, and I had a Fiorentina pizza with a shared bottle of Chianti, and it hit the spot. We walked around the centre a while longer, and struggled to find any bars…this was the only strange thing I found about Florence. Whilst in countries like Portugal or Spain there are an abundance of bars all over the place, our latin counterparts don’t seem to have this kind of culture. Later, we were informed that in Italy all the bars will be in one region of the city more or less.
We eventually found a bar, and whilst having a quiet drink were interrupted by a Northern Irish couple by our side (completely smashed obviously) who asked where we were from etc etc. I don’t mind when this happens tbh, but this couple were past the point of coherent speech, and were repeatedly telling me the same story about some American family they met at Dublin airport who had been stuck there for weeks, and why would they even bother going to Dublin they asked me, they lived on a ranch! I replied by stating that maybe they just like to see new things, and are probably bored of the ranch. The blank expression that greeted me told me that from this point onwards I should just nod and grin. Once her boyfriend went to the toilet, and the girl I was with went to the bar, the N.Irish girl informed me that I was not very portuguese looking because I was slim, but that I had the brooding eyes or something. Ok…at this point I worried slightly, because her boyfriend looked mental. The boyfriend returned with shots of baileys mixed with sambucca for all of us, and my companion returned with shots of limoncello. At some point, I noticed that he was beginning to make moves on my girl, and she on me. Haha, the bastards. They weren’t even remotely near worth the hassle, and so we made our excuses and exited back to the hotel.
Upon returning to our room, I wondered whether anybody would have made the swap if they were in my position, and whether it’d be worth it. My question was answered by the most incredible sex I’d had in a long time, and I decided I had made the right decision sticking with the girl I had travelled with.
The rest of the weekend involved an absurd amount of gallery visiting, including The Uffizi, Palaccio Vecchio, seeing Michaelangelos David, Ponte Vecchio etc., with lots of good food, good drinking, and a copious amount of intercourse too.
In short, it was a good and rather uneventful trip. I know it makes better reading when I get drunk and piss on side streets, before failing epicly at making moves at the girl. But personally, I prefer eating good ice-cream in the sun with a good looking girl by my side.
Today was the funeral of my friends dad, which had been delayed a week due to the travel chaos meaning the priest was stuck abroad and family couldn’t fly in, and this lowered my mood. These funerals always get me. The complete pointlessness of everything becomes apparent when you see a woman crying over a man that she had loved for decades and now is gone forever. Upon viewing such harrowing scenes, a darker side of me urges to never get close to anybody like that, and therefore I’ll never feel such pain. But I imagine the good times outweigh everything. But in that moment, the good times that existed seemed to be drowned out under the howls of women crying.
2 hours and 3 rebuys later and I’m down to the last 3 of about 240 entrants, after some pretty bad beats both given and received. As the short stack with about 12BBs left I shoved with Ah3h over an aggro button raiser, and he called with 22 but I missed my outs…still. I think the $316 is my biggest tourney cash ever. LOL donkaments etc.
