So here’s a map of Pisa. I tried to trace a route with the pencil in paint for you to see where we walked from but I stink at that function. LOL
So I have circled in red the airport where we arrived. The black circle is our hostel. Look for Corso Italia and that is the main street we walked every single day. Other points of interest are the train station (green circle), the bus station (blue circle), and the Place of Miracles (purple circle). Pat says that it’s not quite 3 km from the airport to the hostel. HOWEVER we walked that with 7 carry on bags and 5 children, two of which needed carried at times. The carry bags weren’t too heavy. I know mine weighed 14lbs and Pat’s was right at 20lbs. The others were around those weights with one being about 7lbs. On the way to the hostel, it was late afternoon so very HOT (90 degrees) and I not only carried my bag but I carried Emily on my back about half way. We walked to the bus station every single day. More than once. LOL!!!
Upon arrival, I was very surprised at how dirty Pisa is. Germany isn’t dirty like this, NOT even Stuttgart which is also a large city. The worst thing was the smell of raw sewage. EWWWWW!!! So anyway….back to the details everyone has asked for.
We were early for check-in so we asked to leave our bags to get some lunch as we were pretty hungry, hot and tired after our walk from the airport. (and who knew that tennis shoes gave blisters-gulp). Once we had lunch we could check-in to the hostel and get cleaned up. Here’s a picture of Courtney claiming her sleeping area, top bunk of the bed where Pat and I slept.
We went for a walk after this….This is a picture of the square just outside our hostel…where the locals partied every single night. ;-)
Taken from our bedroom window. The magazine and newspaper stand.
We walked back down to the bus stop (blue circle on the map). We needed to go to Camp Darby (US military base nearby and our sole reason for staying in Pisa…so we had something familiar conveniently nearby…as you know from my Day 1 post, this didn’t turn out to be too convenient). On our way we found this neat building they were reconstructing.
LOOK! Pinnochio has a stand for his TV….
I didn’t realize this picture was so gory until AFTER I snapped it. ICK!
Emily’s ride of choice….
Old building near the bus station (the orangish building in the corner).
This sign tells the bus route we purchased…or thought we had. I don’t think we ever got the right tickets…although this did eventually get us close to Darby.
Camp Darby was located near the town of Tirrenia….on the back side of it. We didn’t know that at the time. Our second trip out there went a whole lot more smoothly. More on that later.
Seth sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the bus to arrive. He was tickled to ride a real bus, although he was really HOPING for a double decker bus.
Garret and Tyler also waiting on the bus ride…no they are not unhappy children…they just think that it’s uncool to smile in pictures (just like their father).
That’s almost all the pictures I took of our first day in Italy. If you want to read (or re-read our first day you can go HERE .
This is after we returned from our hairy scary ordeal… (and that expression is “FINE, I’ll smile but you can’t make me look at the camera too”. he’s rather handsome when he’s smiling and doesn’t look all intimidating.
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1 comment:
Very cool wall art! And I think the not smiling is a teenage boy thing, it's like pulling teeth to get Antonio to smile normally in pictures, usually he's all moody & serious looking, but sometimes he puts these cheesy grins on his face like some kind of car salesman! LOL!
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