Monday, October 15, 2007

Shitty weekend turned Adventurous

So pretty much as all of you, my Prague trip got cancelled. I was very bitter, and still am bitter to a point, but ill have you all know i will be goin ther within the next 2 months...so what better way to spice up our boring weekend in Florence than to go round 2 on Vespas for an ENTIRE 24 HOURS....wow what an insane experience. Riding them along the coast is one thing, renting them in an urban city is another.. Besides, the places we went, Fiesole, San Gimignano, Siena, ect..would have cost around 30-40 euros anyway..and vespas only cost 55 for 24 hrs.

So we got our vespas around 730 on friday....what better way to kick off the rental than riding in and around florence, getting lost and heading up to piazza michaelangelo to take pictures of the beautiful city at night.. Then after that we head up to Fiesole, a town north of Firenze which also overlooks Florence at a farther distance...riding bikes at night is a whole different experience.
Heres some picts we took at Fiesole.


So we cruised around for a bit then headed back to Florence to call it an early night as we were goin on an epic adventure the following morning.
Got up at 630 the followin morning(saturday) and hit the vespas by 730...Florence is extremely confusing to drive around. Finally got out of the city by 830...seriously got lost so many times, but whatever we got on the road we needed to be, and were smooth sailing.
We took a beautiful ride on Chianti road, basically a nice little road that goes thru tuscany with wineries on all sides of you with hills of green and the smell of a billion wine grapes...also saw a sweet golf course with some nice morning dew all over it...as you can imagine these sights with the combination of being on a little scooter with cold ass air breezing by ur face was awesome...yet this was only the beginning of our day

Picture from Chianti Road

So we took chianti road for awhile then headed towards Siena. About an hr and half 2 hr trip..great stuff..Siena was pretty cool. reminded me alot like Florence. lot of tourists and streets look the same.

Siena's duomo was unbelievable..could be my favorite so far...wanted to go inside but line was bout an hr long and we had a strict moped schedule to follow

Next off was San Gimignano, a town very similar to Siena due to its gothic and Romanesque architecture....its also famous for its towers..once had 70 towers at one point , many of them r still ther but most didnt last.
Heres a picture from the road of the great San Gimignano...pretty sick view..might need to click on the picture to see the city more clearly. We also sat at this lookout and ate some bomb sandwiches we brought from our favorite little deli in florence.Once we arrived to the tower town, we paid to climb the tallest tower in the city which pretty much overlooks all of tuscany..pretty cool.

Stayed ther for bout an hr, then hit the road again. THis time we had it in our gameplan to reach the coast...which was atleast 2 hrs away. Our destination was Livorno, little coast down south of viareggio. Once again the scenery was awesome, just crusin thru random italian towns where we would get wierd looks, but whatever we were rollin on our vespas. All of a sudden wwe pretty much never saw any directional signs towards livorno..but whatever we were just ridin the highway. Not to worried cuz weve been lost before nad always have gotten out of it...keep in mind our map was a p.o.s. and had none of the road or towns we were supposedly in. The fact that we never wanted to stop goin the wrong direction hurt us..as we got drastically lost and we pretty much on empty for fuel.
We were drastically lost and we knew it..with barely any gas left..and gas stations arent too common, specially in the middle of wine country on barren roads. So we came upon a town and managed to spot an italian lady..had to create some good italian to ask here where the closest gas station was. All i know is the first word she said was "lontano" meaning far...wow. we then asked how to get ther..and kind of understood...then her husband came out and we started talkin to him...then he was like wait a second..goes back in the house..we thought it was to get someone who spoke english..but he came out and went to his car...then we thoought he had a gas container...wrong again..this little italian guy got in his car..and told us to follow him.. Sure enough he was showin us how to get the the gas station and wher we needed to go to get back to florence..r bike rental was up in 2 and half hours...We followed this italian for bout 30 minutes..till he led us to the gas station..honestly was a baller..nice guy and everything..felt guilty not payin him for his help but he looked like he was more than happy to help some americans out.
So we filled up and he told us where we needed to go back to florence. So r effort to reach the coast failed but im pretty sure we were only bout 20 km away from the beach..so essentially i can say we made it. The way back was absolutely crazy..r little 100cc vespas got on the superstrada. the speed limit was 90km/hr and r things could barely push 65 km/hr and keep in mind that this superstrada is a 1 lane highway for several minutes...good god..dangerous and scary as hell but what an experience. suprisingly only got honked at once but probly pissed off every driver. We were on the superstrada for bout 2 hrs, and made it back to the scooter rental with bout 10 minutes left on r rental...worked out perfectly..what a day

to this day, we really dont know where the hell we got lost to..as the old italian man and his wife didnt even know where they lived on the map. We're currently try to google earth r travels, let u know if we figure out where the hell we were..either way it was a 12hr bike ride and my ass was very sore...for a good cause tho as it was quite the adventure

yep..thats it. Switzerland in 3 days..peace


2 comments:

  1. im hella jealous hombre...we stayed in a villa at san giminano for 2 weeks 2 years ago...went to siena too. That main square is sick...did anyone tell you that they have a huge ass horse race in that half moon square? Supposedly it is loco. Also, switzerland is way baller...where are you goin there? i recommend Zurrich, Bern, or Lucerne. Let me know some details.

    Peace,
    Josh

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  2. hi there, stumbled on your blog. a friend and i are going to try and rent scooters in florence. do you remember where you rented yours? thanks!

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