A quote from one of my all time favorite movies, Life is Beautiful. Or La vita è bella which is just ten times prettier to say. If you haven't seen it, watch it! And watch it in Italian with the English subtitles; it's just not the same dubbed over in English.
Every once in a while my husband starts my day off with a good "buon giorno, Principessa!" Our last day in Tuscany was one of those days.
We were up bright and early as we had a taxi picking us up at the hotel at 7:45 am. The train station is at the bottom of Cortona in Camucia and isn't all that far but we weren't about to haul our luggage along those ridiculously steep roads. Our driver was this sweet old man that pointed out every detail along the way. "Here they grow corn. Here they grow sunflowers. Here they grow tobacco...which is bad." And so on and so on. He actually stopped the car on the way down the hill and backed up just to rescue a small bird that was on the other side of the road. It was quite adorable. He even came inside the train station with us to make certain we got on the right train. Awwww.
So by now you've got to be wondering where we were headed. Lucky for us, Florence was only an hour away by train! And it was so easy. Hop on the train, hop off the train, store our luggage with the bag deposit place and we were off. Easy as pie.
Unfortunately, our map reading skills aren't quite up to par and we left the train station heading in the wrong direction. It should have tipped us off that EVERYone else was walking in the other direction but we'll chalk it up to it being early and that our espresso hadn't set in. We figured it out after a few blocks later and turned around.
We spent the morning sight-seeing and taking pictures....but after a few shots the camera battery died. That's right, I didn't charge the battery before I left. I can almost guarantee you that it won't happen again. Silly me. But here's what we got before the battery crashed:
We hadn't been in Florence all that long before the battery died and I was afraid we might miss something worth taking a picture of so we went in search of a disposable. Let me tell you something - disposable cameras were only cool when I was in high school and digital cameras were still too expensive. These days you just don't see people sporting the disposable camera because you look silly. And I did. The camera we found didn't even have a flash on it. Wind and click. Wind and click. That was it. It was honestly embarrassing and you can forget about having someone else taking a picture of the both of us. They would have laughed us right off that old bridge. So, like I said, I can guarantee that I will NEVER forget to charge the battery again.We had lunch in a little trattoria. Pizza and a glass of wine. Perfection. Then spent the afternoon walking around. I bought the cutest little vintage looking shirt that says "Ciao bella" on it and another Christmas ornament. We just had to have gelato one last time....and I quickly discovered that was a bad idea. The place we picked piled a fist full of gelato onto a cone about the size of your thumb. It was sunny and windy which was the perfect storm for a complete mess. Note to self - creamy gelato belongs in a cup, not a cone.
By then our trip was just about over. We collected our luggage from the train station then boarded a bus to Pisa. Our flight left right on time which was great because we were VERY anxious to get home. Not because we were tired. Not even to see our sweet puppy, who wasn't getting picked up until the next morning. No, we were anxious to get back because we had missed the Oklahoma State / Georgia game and couldn't wait one second longer to see it! And boy was it worth it! Way to go Cowboys!!! It was the perfect end to a perfect vacation!
Ahhhh, la vita è bella.
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