San Gimignano

For future trips, we will do a LITTLE extra planning. Not much, cause there's many adventures to be had, but enough so that we don't do the same train experience. We made the mistake of flying into Madrid and then taking the train to Italy. I wanted Michael to experience travel by train across Europe. That was one of my favorite experiences. Well, I forgot that when you're back-packing through Europe, you go shorter distances. We were on the train for two days and two nights. It wasn't terrible. We both love to read. And the countryside was beautiful - all the fall colors. We went from Madrid to Barcelona and from there, down the coast of France into Italy. The views were pretty incredible. And it was quite fun to cross three countries in the matter of 48 hours. By the time we got to Italy, we were suffering from mixed languages. "Por favor, deux ribolitta!" But it was a LONG trip. Luckily, the countryside is what I love about Europe, and Michael really seems to enjoy it, too. The different landscape, the quaintness of the towns - very unlike the "modern-ness" of our country.
Once we got over into Italy (and the "boogie-down" trains (they were all covered in graffiti)), we had to transfer from our train in Pisa at 3:00 am (another reminder: small, but powerful travel alarm clock). Michael wasn't able to sleep much, for fear of missing the connection. He actually got us out of the train on time. In Pisa (at 3:00 am), there's not much to do except wait for the next train. Which we did. And we ended up in Firenze at 5:30am. Nothing was open. It was still dark and raining. Michael left the luggage and myself in this waiting area and disappeared for about 20 minutes. In one fell swoop, he managed to find money, grab us a bite of breakfast, and find the bus that would take us to San Gimignano. Pretty amazing cause everything was closed! We hopped the bus and arrived in San Gimignano at about 8 am. Exhausted. We rolled our bags through the cobblestone streets (I made quite a racket) and found our hotel. They were kind enough to let us check in early.
And here we are! The first double bed of our travels!!! It was beautiful. We had a shower and soap and laid down to relax - wow. Ahhh....