Pisa Picture Overload

day 18 // florence // pisa // lucca // florence

I'm sick, I'm sleep deprived, and I have a huge zit on my chin, but guess what? Today was hands-down the best day I've had on this journey so far. If I had to summarize the entire day into one phrase: pure bliss. So here it is. I had to wake up early to get ready before meeting at the bus stop across town, but we managed to leave a few minutes earlier than usual, allotting us a enough time to grab a quick coffee and muffin at McDonalds before we filed onto the bus and assumed our sleeping positions for the hour and a half bus ride to Pisa. You can probably guess what happened when we got there… yup. SO. MANY. PICTURES. We even decided to skip out on an optional tour of the Cathedral solely so that we could take more leaning tower pictures. We were determined to get the perfect one, and trust me - we left with plenty of options. Then we left Pisa, because let's be honest, there's literally nothing else to see in Pisa besides the Leaning Tower. Then we took a short bus ride to the neighboring town of Lucca. I didn't really know what to expect, all I knew was that Lucca was supposedly really pretty. The 10-ish kids in my Italian class broke off from the rest of the group because we were supposed to meet our teacher (the odd one) for lunch because he lives in Lucca. Well he ended up not showing up (why am I not surprised) and Lauren and I just ventured off on our own and found a cute little lunch place where we were serenaded by a strange and kind of creepy old man.

As we were leaving, we spotted a gourmet macaroon shop, so obviously we had to go get a couple. They were heavenly. Then we just roamed around, browsed some cute little stores, and then we turned the corner. It was an adorable little town square, perfectly boxed in by the coolest trees you've ever seen, with an ice rink in the middle. As we approached the young European couples holding hands as they ice-skated, the music got louder and guess what was playing… Story of My Life by One Direction. If that wasn't the most perfect moment I don't know what is. (I thought videos might a cool way to give you guys a little deeper look into my experiences, so I started with a couple on today's post - let me know what you think!)

It was just so magical that we couldn't pass up renting some skates and getting on the ice ourselves. We joined a few other girls from our group and we all skated around the rink. (It even started raining while we were skating for a bit!) I feel the need to point out the fact that I literally can NOT skate to save my life… plus my skates were too big so my ankles just got really sore really fast, but still - it was awesome. It was almost like we just didn't have a care in the world and we made fools of ourselves as we sang, danced, and attempted to skate around this quaint little rink in the middle of a beautiful square in the middle of Italy. It was just too perfect. Then we met up with some of our other friends and sat down at a little restaurant, where I enjoyed my fifth orange juice of the day (hey mom - aren't you proud of me for getting my vitamin C fix when I'm sick?) and some little tea sandwiches. Then the entire group gathered at our meeting point and headed back to the bus where we loaded up to go home. I slept all the way home. When we arrived back in Florence, we had to walk back across town from the bus stop to our apartments where I got into my pajamas and under my covers in attempt to sleep off my head-cold.