This month I had a chance for the first time in my life to visit Italy. We arrived in Venice and then made stops in Bolonia, Florence, and Pisa. At a glance, the difference between Italy and Germany is that there: people speak English, follow the fashion, and you can pay everywhere with the card.
Venice
The first destination was Venice. I’ve read a lot about it and was not very surprised, but I expected much more tourists. In fact, we walked around city center and did not suffer from the crowd. Maybe the reason was the bad weather. Two days we have been there rain changed intensity from shower to pouring.
I also didn’t get San Marco Cathedral. Style is the same as a restaurant in Abhasia: when the owner took all the expensive stuff he could find on the local market and put it all together. The same here: columns of different colours, a lot of sculptures, a lot of beautiful art pieces of different styles that do not match with each other.
Overall, it is very enjoyable to walk around Venice. there are a lot of beautiful channels, shops and cafes. I am not sure I want to live there, but I would like to return and spend a couple of days there.
Bolognia
Everything I knew about Bolognia was the famous sauce for pasta. I didn’t expect anything special from it. However, after rainy Venice, I was impressed by how vibrant and nice this city is. And for wide sidewalks ander the roofs I fell in love with it. This city was rebuilt in the 18th century to adjust it to a fast-growing population. And now it is a city of students where a lot of universities are located. Not a coincidence that here they developed international educational standards.
Here I’ve learned an important lesson for Italy. You cannot eat whenever you want. If your children slept during lunchtime, then you need to wait for dinner. There is no way to find a cafe with food between 3 and 7 pm.
Walking around the city we found ourselves in the middle of wine festival. Local wine maker brought their production and you can taste them. For 15 euro we were provided with a glass and 6 tokens. Wine price was in range from 1 to 3 tokens. So we had a lot of fun going from one exhibition to another.
Florense
This was the main city of our trip and I had a huge apprehantion toward it. And this city has a lot of beautiful things to see. The problem is that the city center is too small for so many people. You could not walk around the sidewalks, because thet y are too narow and you need to go to the roard and constantly run away from cars. It makes me very nervous walking around the city with two litle kids. Public transport is not better. Buses are riding across narow streets and ariving to the stops without any coonnection to schedule. So we were waiting out bus from 15 to 30 minutes each time, very upseting.
However, during out visit we were at 3 museums: Leonardo da Vinchi museum, Medichi palace and Galileo museum. The first one is really good. It is very interactive and has a lot of Leonardo’s invention models, as well as body models he studied and simple machines for kids to learna basic laws.
The other two was not that impressive. Medichi Palace shows the residence of the governing family and Galileo museuim has an impressive collection of scientific devices but lacked of descriptions. I googles several times for device usage but then gave up and just walked by.
Medichi Palace
Galileo Museum
Pisa
After overcrowded Florense Pisa welcomed us with quite and beauty. We enjoyed walking wide pedestian-only streets and free places in cafes. The famous tower is not falling any longer, after reconstruction couple years ago incline decreased from 5 to 3 degrees. The complex around the tower is preaty with wast green fields around the buildings.
