Submitted by Stephanie Billig on the 2017 winter session program in Italy sponsored by the Department of Psychology…
Since my last blog post, I have done so much it’s hard to pick what to write about. As a group, we moved from Florence to Rome and have been here for the past week. The day after we got here we had a fully free day with no classes and nothing planned so my friends and I decided to leave the city and plan our own trip.
That night, we had a plan that we were going to travel by bus to Siena, but then came across the realization that very few buses run on Sunday so at 11:00 pm we rearranged the trip to travel to Lucca and Pisa. We hopped on a train at 9:00 am and rode it to Lucca. Lucca is this little town near Pisa surrounded by a wall. We were fortunate enough to go on a day where a little market was taking place in the square complete with an ice skating rink for the locals. The highlight of our time in Lucca was climbing up a tower called Torre di Guinigi. This is no ordinary tower though because it has trees growing on the top of it. The view from the top of the tower was definitely worth the 200+ steps.
After Lucca, we took a short train ride to Pisa. I was a little disappointed with the town of Pisa to be honest. The only thing that keeps bringing people to Pisa is the Leaning Tower. The tower is cool though and one of my friends decided to spend 18 euro to go all the way to the top. We explored a little bit before getting a train back to Florence.
Learning how to manage public transportation and relying on trains to take me from place to place has been a bit of a change from what I’m used to. It made me appreciate having a car and being able to drive anytime and anywhere. For only planning the trip the night before and having to take 3 different trains, the trip worked out surprisingly well.