Day 1: Home to Florence via Pisa

Another bank holiday means it's time for another trip! This time we've headed to the Tuscany region of Italy, accompanied by Tim's cousin Baden, who has had Italy on his bucket list for quite some time. We had an early start to the weekend this morning with alarms set for 3am to enable us to get down to Stansted on time for our 07.45 flight to Pisa. Stansted was pretty busy - not unexpectedly, as this bank holiday corresponds to school holidays too - but we weren't checking in bags so we made it through the airport with time to spare for a breakfast in Wetherspoons. The flight was on time and before we knew it, we were touching down in a warm and sunny Pisa

Pisa is one of the most unusual places I've ever flown to, in that you can walk straight from the airport into the town without needing to take any form of transportation.  Admittedly it takes half an hour or so until you get to the part of town with the famous leaning tower, but it definitely makes a change from squeezing on to overpriced airport buses.

After a bit of walking the streets began to look more scenic...

...and we soon found our first pretty square.

We crossed over the river Arno, which runs through the centre of Pisa...

,,,and found our second pretty square.

From there it wasn't far until we got our first glimpse of the famous leaning tower of Pisa

It leans an incredible amount in real life, so much so that it's hard to understand how it's still standing. I struggled to capture it in photos, but Tim got some good ones.

This is the second time I've been to Pisa. I remember being surprised the first time I came how many other beautiful buildings there are surrounding the leaning tower.

We did a circuit around the vicinity of the tower, admiring it from different angles.

Before we came I'd been debating whether I should buy tickets to climb to the top. I didn't in the end and when I got here, I was glad  I think if you're on the top you must feel like you're standing at a really funny angle!

The area around the tower was obviously very busy and there were lots of people trying to get the perfect shot.

We were hungry after our early start to the day, so soon headed off to a quieter part of the town centre where we sat outside in the sunshine with some drinks...

...and the most enormous pizzas!

The intention was only ever to make a flying visit to Pisa and so after lunch we set off towards the main train station, Pisa Centrale. For the bargain price of €8.90 each we were able to catch a regional train to Florence, which only took around an hour. The apartment we're staying in in Florence is around a kilometre from the main train station, so it didn't take us long to find it. It's nice and spacious We've got a big living/dining area...

...as well as two large bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The one thing which is not great about the apartment is the WiFi; it seems inexplicably slow this evening, hence only a brief blog. Hopefully it will be a bit faster tomorrow and I'll be able to upload some more photos from Florence!