Firenze and environs

Firenze (Florence) is near some other interesting places, and isn't exactly boring itself, so we decided to visit. I'll divide this one into three sections, which won't be chronological, but cartological.

Firenze

Firenze is relatively compact. The two main sights are a statue and a building. I'll show you the building first.

We knew there was a large church in the city that we were supposed to go look at, but nothing quite prepared me for walking around the corner and having this thing jump out at me. Bizarrely, it reminded me of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona – like something that Gaudi would design if he were into straight lines and squares. I was expecting something really amazing inside, but it was a standard, if large, Roman Catholic church building on the inside.

It did have a funky 24 hour clock that turned backwards on the back wall

And this ceiling.

The other thing that you might want to see in Firenze is this statue:

David

He's actually holding a sling. I read somewhere that the statue is meant to be viewed from where he's looking, because that's quite a menacing glare if it's viewed from straight on. Unfortunately when viewed from below and in front it makes him look concerned, and maybe a little put out but not like he's about to face down Goliath.

The museum with David, the Accademia, also had a bunch of cool medieval art. Mostly icons and stuff, but there were some cool bits. At least, I thought it was cool – Anna didn't dig those and spent most of her time admiring David instead. This part was also quite something:

A whole room full of plaster prototypes of marble statues

Rows of heads

More heads

Other things to do in Firenze include wandering around looking for jandals (they seem to stop stocking them in 'winter' even though it's over 20 outside) and going into other churches. There's a public square, Piazza della Signoria, with replicas of a bunch of different statues, including David, so if you're feeling cheap, you can say that you went to Firenze and saw David (and then explain that by Firenze you mean Florence, and then end up looking all pretentious). The original is definitely worth seeing though.

Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre means Five Towns, or something like that. I think it might actually be Five Lands, but since they're within walking distance of each other and are more like villages the Five Towns definition seems to fit.

One way to see these towns is via train. There's a track that runs between all the towns, and you can get a ticket that allows you to see all of them. We got a couple of those and started at the top one to work our way down. While the towns are all different and unique in their own special way (yes that's a tautological redundancy, and yes, so was that), they're all essentially the same – villages of multi-story dwellings next to the ocean. Some have cliffs. Others have beaches. They're all picturesque. Observe:

Monterosso has a nice-ish beach

The rain was chasing us the whole day.

Vernazza has a tower. Here's the view from the top looking toward the town.

View out to sea.

Manarola has a nice walkway by the sea. Unfortunately many of the coastal walkways were closed; this one only went halfway around the peninsula, but it was still nice.

Riomaggiore.

By this time the sun was beginning to set, so we watched it paint the sky in beautiful hues while waves crashed against the rocks below, until it was time to catch the train home.

Pisa

Pisa is one of those places that, if you're in the area, you have to visit. There's some municipal by-law somewhere that states this.

It's weird going to a place like Pisa. It's like going to Paeroa – you either live there (and my condolences if you do) or you're there to visit the L&P bottle. Of course, Paeroa doesn't have souvenir stands lining the streets around the L&P bottle.

From what I'd heard, the tower isn't all that impressive. Having seen it, I think it definitely stands out, but isn't a must-see building. Anna felt it was worthwhile though.

The tower is leaning towards the viewer

Some of the other impressive buildings on site.

It's not all that amazing; if it wasn't leaning then we wouldn't have gone to see it, because it wouldn't be world famous. Well it might be, but only world famous in Italy.