pisa + portofino

so for our first weekend trip, i went with catherine, judith, kelsey (the three girls i’m rooming with), zac, and micheal (4^th year landscape guys) to pisa and portofino. we left friday afternoon and got to our hostel in pisa around dinner time.

it was cheapest for all six of us to share a room, so six beds were shoved in a little room…it was pretty cute! i don’t think the boys thought so…especially because they could barely fit in their beds!

we asked the woman at the hostel where to go for dinner and she directed us to the area around the leaning tower. it was crazy when we just came up to an opening and looked to our right and saw the tower! it was so cool! we found a pizzeria and got pizza and pasta. it was so good! we walked around a little more and found a cool bar called ‘the wall’. the whole back wall of the bar was glass and butted up against the really old wall that runs in the middle of the city of pisa. the bar was really cool with fun lights and a bartender who looked a little too much like fabio to us. after a drink we headed back to our villa to get some sleep.

saturday morning we got up and went to the tower. we bought tickets to climb to the top. it’s over 300 steps to the top, but after climbing all the hills and steps in genoa, getting to the top of the tower was a breeze! the view was gorgeous!

we walked down the street to a cute café we had seen the night before and ate delicious sandwiches and gelato while seeing the tower from our table. it was quite a view! afterwards we went back to try to take fun pictures with the tower. it was harder than we thought it’d be! but we got some pretty good ones. we took pictures with the clemson tiger rag too!

we walked around the city and found lots of cute stores and got cappuccino at a café before heading back to the cathedral next to the tower. the inside was gorgeous! we went back to our room for a little bit before dinner and enjoyed a couple bottles of wine while talking…what turned out to be a few hours later, we went downtown to get some dinner. we went to another cute restaurant and had pizza and pasta again. while walking around to find other things to do, we ended up at a tiny little mexican restaurant. we had delicious tequila flavored beers and tried to order chips and salsa, but the salsa we ended up getting was the spiciest i’ve ever tasted! the boys ended up having a contest to see who could eat more without taking a drink. it was hilarious! after that we went back to the bar from the night before. there was a soccer game on, so it was packed! it was really fun to watch the game with everyone.

the next morning we took a bus to the train station to go to a small town called portofino, which is only about a half hour from genoa. apparently portofino was a hot spot for celebs in the 1950s. we definitely visited during their off season…almost everything was closed. it was beautiful though! we are planning to go back once it warms up! we hiked up to see a castle there and a church with a pretty cemetery and a light house. it was really cool but a lot of walking, and we didn’t have anywhere to put our bags so we were tired pretty fast. we got back to the train station (with a quick stop for this coffee/chocolate/ice cream dessert) and took a train back to genoa.

we got back around the same time as everyone else and all ate dinner together. now we just have to get through our review on wednesday  and we’re off to naples, rome, and florence next week!!