Travelling trio goes to Tuscany
Over the years, me and the Katies have been to a lot of places together, from Las Vegas to Dubrovnik. While we've often been joined by our other friends too, it's usually the three of us that form the travelling trio and this summer was no different. Although this summer there was a pattern of threes going on as not only was there 3 of us, but there were 3 destinations on our Italian itinerary!
The first leg of our trip was actually just two of us, as Katie planned to join later in the week. So me and Katie started off in Pisa, specifically at the Grand Duomo Hotel. It was super cheap and the view from our room basically paid for itself! The hotel was a little dated but it was a bargain and in the absolute perfect location so overall I'd definitely recommend it.
What other natural first stop is there in Italy apart from pizza and aperol spritz? We had an amazing lunch at a place called Quarto d'Ora Italiano and it was honestly one of the best pizzas ever. Look at that burrata!
You may have heard this from other people that have been to Pisa, but essentially the leaning tower is not just the main attraction but it's one of the only attractions. Don't get me wrong, it was really beautiful and impressive, but I did find that whole square way too crowded and contrived. Everywhere you look, people are posing for almost exactly the same photo opp as each other, and it's just really busy to try and see everything. I mean, we had fun taking in the sights, but I was definitely happy to escape the square for a drink afterwards.
Pisa certainly wasn't short of great food and drink options, and we quickly fell in love with the Capri spritz (limoncello) and the Hugo spritz (St Germain). Most of my favourite desserts are Italian (and most of the other ones are French) so we treated ourselves to a little drink-and-dessert combo and I got the most amazing cannoli.
Having moaned mildly about the leaning tower, it felt like a rite of passage to climb it while we were in the city. We hadn't pre-booked tickets or anything so we just went over to the ticket office earlier in the afternoon and booked onto the next available time slot, which was 7pm (so about 4 hours later). We found this worked perfectly for us, but it's worth bearing in mind if you plan to do this yourself and how far in advance you may need to do it. Pisa had been very hot throughout the day (over 30 degrees) so were glad to do the 251 steps to the top of the tower after the heat of the day had worn off. The views from the top were spectacular and it was a really fun climb - you could really feel the lean as you went!
Another reason our hotel was such a fab choice (kudos to Katie for finding it) was because it had this amazing roof terrace with a perfect sunset view. We actually timed it so well too because we arrived just in time to have an aperitivo as we watched the sun go down.
So we made a bit of a faux-pas on our first night. I was certainly operating on the basis that Italian people (and restaurants) are like in Spain and France; no eats before like 8pm and even a midnight dinner is only mildly on the late side. Well apparently that's not true in Pisa so when we headed out at nearly 11, we had a nightmare finding a restaurant that was still open and serving food. Rookie error but we did find somewhere lovely in the end so all's well that ends well!
Hands up if you didn't know that Pisa had a beach? Me neither! Thanks to Katie's pre-Italy research though, we had a plan for our second day (having felt like we'd ticked a lot of the main stuff off on day one). Le Dune beach was about a 30 minute taxi ride from Pisa (although it cost like €70 so note to everyone else - get the bus instead) and it formed part of a long stretch of seaside options. We loved the look of Le Dune because it had beach club vibes and a lovely seafood restaurant, and we had such an amazing day there. We even managed to get the sunbeds for free because the guy just randomly never came over, and they were really cool sunbeds with a visor to protect your head (all sunbeds should have this design in my opinion). The seafood restaurant for lunch was really lovely too and I even managed to order all our drinks completely in Italian! For anyone keeping up with my language learning progress, the French and Spanish is going well to the point that I may even be throwing Italian into the mix properly for next year...
I've been to a lot of different places in Italy now and I have to say that the food in Pisa is some of the best I've had! The restaurant we went to on night 2 (at a more sensible time this time) was simply amazing. If you do go to Pisa, go to Vasari for dinner! We shared a charcuterie board and then I got a truffle ravioli and it was just divine. Having made it out earlier this time, we also had chance to explore the local bars and went for a few drinks. We sought out an Irish bar which we figured would be good, although it was the most hilariously non-Irish place we've ever been to - it didn't even have a subtle nod to Ireland in there at all. But the drinks were strong and cheap so it was still a great choice.
The next morning, it was time to wave goodbye to our hotel and get our train tickets to Florence ready. But knowing that we wouldn't be able to check into our next apartment until the afternoon, we decided to have a leisurely morning in Pisa first. We started things off with gelato (I got melon, Katie got pistachio) and then had a wander around the markets and treated ourselves to some souvenirs. Pisa felt extra hot that day so we cooled off with some icy cocktails and a light lunch in the shade (those air cons that spritz you periodically were a god send).
A hop, skip and a jump later (see also a very sweaty walk, followed by a train and then a very sweaty, weirdly short bus), and we arrived at our apartment in Florence! We'd found it on booking.com and it was honestly such a good shout. It was huge, modern and perfectly located (right next to that super famous sandwich shop, which I can't for the life of me understand why people queue so long for). It was also the penthouse which was great for the view, but came with the small problem of 9 flights of stairs to contend with. A push normally, but an absolute killer with a 20kg suitcase in 37 degree heat!
After a long day of travelling and suitcase-carrying, we'd more than earned a drink! Our apartment was right near Piazza Signoria so we got to see fake David and then chilled in the sunshine with a few cocktails. The perfect way to end the day in my opinion!
I noticed a difference in the food straight away just from moving from Pisa to Florence as Florence seemed to be very meat-centric. Every other restaurant specialised in steak and a lot of them even displayed it in the window (not appetising in my view but there you go). So for our first dinner we went to a place that did the most amazing steak and then headed for some cocktails afterwards. I wore this cute miss selfridge bodysuit for the first time which was an absolute steal in the ASOS sample sale (get yourselves on there if you haven't tried it yet).
Then we made our way up to the river and spied Ponte Vecchio. I didn't walk over it until the next day but like a lot of famous bridges, I would say it's more enjoyable to look at it than to go over it.
When we first started looking at things to do in Florence, we loved the look of the wine windows and knew it was a must-do! Although weirdly, we then completely forgot about it when building our itinerary and hadn't thought to look into where any of them were. Well, luck would have it that the universe was on our side as we happened to stumble across one! It was a super pretty one at that and the whole experience was so much fun.
We had plotted our journey to wind up at the train station to collect a very special delivery, so the last stop on our list was the Santa Maria Novella church. It was a bit of a hidden gem as the main cathedral in Florence gets all the love and attention, but this church was absolutely beautiful and the level of detail on all the decor inside was crazy. Although they weren't satisfied with my level of clothes coverage and so I had to wear this hilarious hazardous suit to enter the house of God!
And then we were a trio! The special delivery we were collecting at the station was Katie, and after showing her to the apartment and dropping the bags off, it was time for pizza. They weren't as insanely good as the ones we'd had in Pisa, but they were still 10/10.
It was time for stop 2 on the house of God tour (probably a lot to say we're non-religious) and we were glad to have pre-booked this one as it was super busy. Top tip; if you do want to climb the dome of the Cathedral, pre-book your time slot online because they weren't letting anyone up on the day without a booking. The actual climb was insanely high too! They do pre-warn about health and heat blah blah blah, but by the time we got to the top of the 463 stairs, we were adamant that the warning hadn't been strong enough. I swear we all nearly passed out but the view from the top was incredible and so worth it. And we naturally had a couple of spritz' to help us recover afterwards, which seemed to do the trick.
The hiking was far from over though as we'd read that Piazzale Michelangelo was the place to see the sunset and so we began a very steep uphill climb to try and catch up. We were up against the clock but we mostly caught it in time - it was so pretty!
I'd obviously been inspired by a very religious day as my outfit was giving biblical-chic! We headed out for a lovely dinner (I went with truffle and mushroom risotto) and then found ourselves an Irish bar for cocktails. We also played a round of everyone choosing a cocktail for each other and Katie chose a negroni sbagliato for me. Although I'd been wanting to try it, I don't think I'll be bothering again - it was awful!
Pitti Palace was gorgeous and I always love looking around somewhere opulent and rich in history. We could've easily spent an extra few hours looking around because there was so much to see but unfortunately we were limited for time so we had to make do with a quick zoom around.
We just had time for a quick bite before we needed to be at the meet point for our tour and we chose another really lovely place. Osteria La Scala made all of their pasta fresh and you could definitely tell - I love the simplicity in really good pasta dishes in Italy.
The tour we'd booked was a very exciting one; a vineyard tour with wine tasting in the Tuscan hills! I always love doing stuff like this not just because it's alcohol-centred fun, but because you always learn some really interesting stuff. We got to try 2 white wines and 2 red wines with a plate of nibbles to go with it and then we even got to try a sweet wine that had been in the barrel for the last 9 years. Which is crazy when you consider that approximately this time 9 years ago, we were all on holiday together but in Zante, and we were more likely to be seen sharing fishbowl cocktails than bottles of wine. Oh how times change (but also not, at the same time, which is nice).
It was a double whammy of a vineyard tour because we went to not one but two different vineyards! It was nice because we not only got to try a range of different wines, but they had slightly different vibes (the first was more romantic and the second was more rustic). To say the whole tour was only £40, it was great value and it was a nice length too as a lot of them were whole day tours and this was about 5 hours so we were back in time for the evening...
Because we'd had some food on the tour, we decided to skip dinner and go straight for cocktails! The first place we chose was so pretty in pink and I got the most elegant cocktail ever, and then we went to another cocktail bar and chose ones with names that best summed each of us up - mine was called 'last word' because I always have to have it!
And then we finished up our night in an open-air club which is pretty much my favourite thing about nights out abroad! If the UK weather wasn't so miserable and grisly, I'd say we should definitely have them here too. Villa Vittoria was really cool and had great music. Another benefit of clubs abroad is how strong they make their drinks - we're talking about a 50/50 ratio of vodka and mixer (a benefit until the next morning anyway).
The next morning, thanks to said strong drinks, we were all feeling delicate. Atleast we didn't have a day of busy trains ahead of us (naht). First we had to get out 20kg suitcases back down all the stairs (our equivalent of Everest) and then we were on our way to the third and final stop on our Italian tour. Naturally we had to get a McDonalds en route in the hope that the hangovers would be sorted by the time we arrived.
Our third stop technically negates my blog post title but we'll ignore that in the interest of artistic license since it was only out of Tuscany by a small margin; we went to Monterosso al Mare in Cinque Terre. The second we stepped off the train, we were hit by the most beautiful coast line ever. The town itself was super pretty too and I forgot to get photos of our hotel but it was also really nice; we'd gone with the super central Hotel Margerita so it was on the main stretch of shops and restaurants and only a stone's throw from the beach.
It was getting kind of late in the afternoon by this point so we didn't bother unpacking and instead got ourselves to the beach as quickly as humanly possible! The weather was absolutely beautiful (and thankfully not quite as hot as in Florence) and we toasted to the last part of our holiday with some cocktails.
If I'd thought the restaurants closed early in Pisa then Cinque Terre was a shock to the system! We're talking like kitchens closing at 8-8:30. Thankfully, I'd started looking at restaurants while we were at the beach and so found this fact out early (rather than running the risk of no dinner at all). While there may have been a short window to enjoy it, the food was absolutely incredible. I had a lovely seafood pasta and then a really good tiramisu. I've learnt that the secret to spotting a good tiramisu is that the more yellow-coloured the cream is, the better it is.
It was another beautiful (and final) day in Cinque Terre and after a breakfast on the sunny patio and then a walk around the bay, we set up shop on the beach again. We took a brief break to go for the most amazing lunch with a view (I ate seafood again surprise surprise), but mostly spent the day gossiping and drinking cocktails on the sand.
It had rolled around so quickly but just like that, it was our last night! We finished our Italian trip exactly the way we'd started it - with some fabulous pasta. We also enjoyed some cocktails at the posh hotel up the cliff which boasted the most amazing views of the whole bay.
And then it was time to commence the long journey home (we're talking a walk, 3 trains, a plane, a bus and then a drive). If you're in any doubt as to whether or not to book that girls trip to Italy, then please do take this as your sign to do it! We had the most incredible time, ate all the most amazing food and made the funniest memories - what more could you ask for from a week away?
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