Friday, October 29th

Leaning Tower of Pisa :)

Friday morning Lucas and I woke up early because we had to be checked out of the hostel before our 9 am walking tour. There were about a dozen people from our hostel that walked around Pisa with the guide.

Luke and I at the tower

We learned all sorts of historical things about different monuments, but the highlight was definitely seeing The Leaning Tower! Luke and I had visited the plaza a few nights before, but since it was dark, we didn’t get to really appreciate the tower. We wanted to climb in it, but you had to have a reservation and it cost 15 euros.

i love to swing :)

The tour lasted about 3 and a half hours, so by the time it finished, we were starving. Luke ate some bread and chorizo my senora had packed, while I took advantage of my last opportunity to eat real Italian pizza. I accidently stole this guy’s seat in the restaurant though and I’m pretty sure he was using some choice words at me. I had no idea what was going on until about 5 minutes later, but by then it was too late. Oh well.

trampoline :)

After lunch, Luke and I decided to wander around the city some more before we caught the train to the airport for our flight to Germany. We went on a mission to find the garden inside the fortress our tour guide had told us about.

I *MUST* have one of
these for my dream house!!

The garden was really pretty. Not as amazing as the palace garden in Cordoba, but for a free garden, I liked it! The BEST part was, as we were leaving, I spotted a playground. Now this wasn’t just any play ground. Not only did it have your standard swings and monkey bars, but it also had an in ground trampoline, a sweet alien climbing thingy, a carousel/marry-go-round, and the coolest spiny ride every!!! I’m going to need a copy of this play ground in my future backyard. Not a joke. J

idk how he could get sick of me!!

When I could no longer see straight from spinning around so much, Luke drug me away from the playground. I didn’t want to leave until he suggested getting ice cream. I’m such a child, haha! We had the most amazing gelato! I had a scoop of wild berry and a scope of chocolate. SO good! We both wanted more, but we also didn’t want to puke on the airplane….

headed to dinner :)

At this point we had to head back to the hostel to get our bags. Naturally things weren’t so easy. The power was off in the block of our hostel, so I had to use the bathroom in the pitch black. Quite the adventure. The receptionist also wouldn’t let us leave because he thought there was a strike going on for some reason. When we finally made our way out of the hostel we had to basically sprint to the train station (we were taking a 5 minute train ride to the airport).

dinner :)

Since the power was out in the neighborhood, about half of the ticket booths weren’t working. Luke and I were getting a little nervous. There was no way we were going to miss the plane to Germany, we still had about 2 hours until take-off, and trains run every 15-20 minutes. The problem was, I had a bag to check and the counter closes 45 minutes before the planes scheduled departure time. While this should have been no problem, there were about 7 million people in line in front of us at the check-in counter. Long story short, I made friends with a little German girl and was able to check my bags, no problem.

Cousins :)

The flight was only about an hour and 15 minutes to Frankfurt. I sat between Luke and this Italian girl. She was super nice (I ran into her leaving the Frankfurt airport when I was going back to Madrid and she was going back to Pisa – SMALL WORLD!)

OP with Nathan's buddies

Nathan was waiting for us at the airport to take us back to his house. His place is HUGE! Seriously! I was super impressed, not only with how big his place was, but how well he had decorated it AND how clean it was. Guess I had low expectations :-P Nathan has the top floor with a living room, kitchen, dining, master bedroom, guest loft, office, spare bedroom (which he uses as a closet), and 2 and a half baths. Walter, one of Nathan’s bffs lives on the middle floor, and G (Matt?) is moving into the basement sometime soon. I slept on the couch in Nathan’s living room which was ginormous and perfect for me J

living the dream :)

After we all cleaned up and took turns checking in on Facebook, we met up in a neighboring town with some of Nathan’s friends from work for dinner. We had some traditional German food: a slab of meat and potatoes. It was delicious. I ordered a pork steak and a salad. So yummy! Nathan also made us all order this special house beer. It was really good too! J

my cousins better than yours!

After dinner we went to another nearby town to The OP, which is a small town bar. It was so much fun because most of the people in the bar worked with Nathan. It was awesome to meet all of his buddies.

After The OP, we went to another club which they call Wick Wacks or something like that. It was more of a dance club than a sit down bar. I had a blast dancing with my cousins and just hanging out.

dominos

Around 3:30 we left the club and headed back to Nathan’s place. We warmed up some leftovers and sat around talking and playing dominos for at least an hour. Nathan, Walter, and G were telling Luke and I stories about work and bragging about each others achievements. All in all – BEST NIGHT EVER!!!! J