Florence & Pisa — Making the Best of a Mix-Up

Florence & Pisa — Making the Best of a Mix-Up

Florence started with a solid travel fail — we went to the wrong city. The plan was to head down to the coast and finally get some ocean time, but somehow I confused Florence with Naples. Yeah… not even close. We wanted the beach and instead ended up in the middle of Tuscany, about as far from it as you can get.

To make it even better, I didn’t use my rail pass because I didn’t want to burn a travel day, and the ticket was way more expensive than I expected. So there we were — inland, sweating, and laughing at how badly I’d screwed up. Luckily, our hostel, YellowSquare, had a rooftop pool, so we decided we’d get in the water another way.

The heat was brutal — 104°F the first day, 102°F the second — so neither of us had much motivation to do anything ambitious. The first day we just hung out by the pool, trying not to melt. The next morning, we got up early and went to a massive flea market with some people from the hostel. We wandered through endless rows of stalls full of leather bags, vintage clothes, and random treasures, but after an hour or two in the sun, we caved and headed back to the pool. A few hours of swimming and cooling off later, we decided to make something out of our “inland beach trip” and booked a quick day adventure to Pisa.

That’s when things got weird.

There was something going on in Pisa that day — soldiers everywhere, military vehicles parked along the streets, and for some reason, no one’s phone service worked. Total blackout. We never figured out what was happening, but it reminded me of traveling through London years ago without a cell phone — asking for directions, meeting locals, and letting the city unfold in real time.

Once we finally reached the tower, we couldn’t help but make fun of everyone doing the classic “holding it up” pose — but we still ended up a little impressed when we saw it in person. The thing’s actually taller than you expect, and I’m glad we went despite being told it wasn’t worth the trip. The area around it was pretty much what you’d imagine — rows of souvenir shops, restaurants, and tour groups everywhere.

Originally, we planned to grab dinner in the city, but with the weird military situation and the blackout still going on, we decided to skip it to make sure we caught our train back to Florence. We were only in Pisa for maybe two hours total, but honestly, that felt like enough. If you’re planning it yourself, give it four just to be safe — but the city itself doesn’t offer much beyond the tower. Still, I’m glad we saw it.

That night back in Florence, I finally got a photo I’d been thinking about since the moment we arrived — a shot of a staircase I couldn’t get out of my head. I stood there for almost an hour waiting for the moment, but people just kept going up and down the stairs nonstop. Right when I thought it wasn’t going to happen, a group of tourists walked up and asked me to take their photo. I laughed and told them, “No — I need my shot.”

The security guard standing nearby backed me up, asked them to move along, and waited with me until the stairs finally cleared. And just like that, I got it. One frame. Worth the wait.

After that, we packed up and booked what we thought was going to be a sweet beach villa for the next leg of the trip.

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

But that’s a story for the next post — Naples.