Adventures in Tuscany, Florence and Pisa - Italy

            I got the call at about 7:59am when I rolled over in my bed and reached for the phone on my desk. Being pitch black in the room, I knocked an open can of ginger ale on the floor, which poured out onto the carpet. I ignored it and picked up the phone. It was Monty, our bandmaster. He said to me “How long are you going to be?”. I replied, “I’ll be ready in about ten more minutes”. He then asked, “how far is the car rental place from where we are docked?” I confidently told him “ it’s in the harbor so it shouldn’t be very far. I will bring a map of the harbor with the Avis car rental place highlighted. You better give me 15 minutes then” He then said “just knock on my cabin door when you’re ready” and he hung up the phone.

            I jumped out of bed and hopped into the shower. I took what had to be the quickest shower in human history as I cleaned the bare essentials and dried off immediately. I called Frank our drummer to check if he was up. The phone rang about a billion times with no response. I figured he’s either sleeping through the rings or he’s in the shower.

            I get all my things together and knock on Monty’s door. He answered and invited me in. He asks if I have heard from Frank this morning. I told him that I tried calling earlier but nobody answered. He said he did the same with no answer. I decided that I was going to knock on his door. Frank’s cabin was right next to Monty’s so as soon as I opened Monty’s door, Franks was right in front of me. I loudly knock three times on his cabin door. I waited. No response. I knocked again, this time even louder. I waited. Still no response. I then noticed that his door was open slightly. I decided I would just barge in. I open the door and in the dark room, I see him asleep in his top bunk. I say loudly “Frank, get up. We’re going to Tuscany bitch!” One of his eye’s open widely and he mumbled into his pillow “Ok, I’ll be there in a second”. I shut the door and go back to Monty’s room.

            I tell Monty that I woke him up and he’s getting ready. Monty seemed very peeved. A half an hour goes by and we still don’t hear from him. I go back across the hall and open the door. He’s back asleep in his bed. I shout “Frank! Get your ass up!” I then reach in my pocket and pull out a few Euro coins. I then proceed to throw them at his face. The first one over shot and hit the wall behind him. The second landed onto his chest and the third was under shot and hit the mattress in front of him. He then made a moaning noise and finally got out of bed. I then returned to Monty’s cabin and told him what happened. Monty once again got more annoyed.

            Finally another half hour later, Frank comes out of his cabin ready to go. I could tell instantly that Frank had pulled an all night-er and was still drunk. He put his hands in the air and yelled, “let’s go to Tuscany bitches!!!” I nervously laughed and looked back at Monty and he just shook his head.

We got off the gangway and looked around to get our bearings on where we were. I noticed that there was an information booth near us so I walked over there to ask for directions to the Avis building. The woman working the booth told us where it was and then asked if we wanted her call them and book the car for us. She said that they could even pick us up. We agreed and waited by the booth for them to pick us up. 20 minutes later the car arrived and an Italian man got out who spoke good English and asked us to get in.

He drove us to the Avis building and we filled out the proper paper work and we were ready to go. He gave us a GPS system and logged our destinations into it: Livorno to Florence, Florence to Pisa, Pisa back to Livorno. As we approached the car, the topic of whose going to drive finally came up. I reluctantly agreed to drive. The car was a manual transmission and it had to have been about 10 years since I’ve used a manual transmission car. I got into the Fiat and started it up. After everyone got situated, I pulled the car into first gear and off we went. At the first stop sign I applied the brakes and the car jolted forward. Everyone’s heads jerked forward and then looked at me with concern. I looked at them and said “well, looks like the brakes work pretty well… hehe” After a few minutes, I got use to the car’s handling and next thing we knew, we were on the freeway.

I soon realized that the speedometer was in kilometers and it might as well have read in Wingdings font because I had no idea what it meant. I just kept looking at the speed limit signs and made sure it was under that number. I also realized that people love to speed. I had several people along the way tailgating me. I would always pull to the right lane to let them pass but some just decided to pull into the right lane as well and tailgate me there too.

Once we reached the countryside, I got to see the real Tuscany. Rolling hills with Spanish villas and lots of vineyards and olive orchards. It’s exactly how I remembered all the photo’s and TV documentaries portraying it. It was unreal to see it in person. I really wanted to just pull off onto one of these roads and just get lost. Find some old country road and see how far off the beaten path it goes. As I imagined this, something familiar came to mind. I looked at the houses, I looked at the lay out of the land and something seemed very familiar to me. I then realized what it was. It reminded me of home. It reminded me of California! The vinyards, the hills, the Spanish style homes. It reminded me of different parts of California. Some of it looked like Napa, some looked like Palos Verdes and some reminded me of Santa Barbra. I was home! Just then, I large billboard came in front of us that read in Italian and then I realized I was no where near California and I came back to my senses.

After an hour drive through the beautiful Tuscany countryside, we reached Florence. After navigating through some narrow, cobblestone alleys, we found a small parking lot and the last vacant parking spot. I pulled in and we climbed out the windows into the streets.

We walked down the street and decided that we would like to sit down and have a drink. Next to us was a nice looking bar and restaurant so we went inside. Monty did his best to use what Italian he knew and ordered us a drink. We sat down and chatted, waiting for the drink to come. After a few minutes arrived with a bowl of peanuts and salsa verde tortilla chips. We sat, ate, drank and talked about a variety of subjects ranging from music to our childhood memories. I would look outside the window and watch people walking past, noticing the look of the Italians both naturally and fashionably. People watching I think is one of my favorite things to do. It doesn’t take any effort and it also lets your thoughts sort of wander into unknown territories. From one interesting looking person, you can deduce or even just make up and entire back-story for them. I then realized that I was starting to get kinda drunk.

I then looked over to Frank and Monty and saw that they were arguing about alleged mistakes that Frank had made in previous shows and I decided that maybe looking out the window some more was a better use of my attention. Monty then bought us one more round and after we finished, we decided to try to find the Statue of David.

We stumbled down the streets and tried to navigate or way to where we thought the museum was. We would ask people where it was and showed them a black and white map of Florence that Avis had given us. Each person we asked had their own idea on where they thought it was. It looked like we were left to our own devices for this.

We finally reached an amazing church. The sign in front of the massive doors read “Opera Di Santa Maria Del Fiore”. The large church was colored only by a bright white, green and an orange-ish color with several Byzantine patterns all around it. On the front towards the top was a large circular stained glass window, right above the churches doors. Towards the back of the church was a large, decorated dome. There were hundreds of tourists coming in and out of it and taking photos from the outside. We walked by and marveled at the density and detailed decorations on the outside.

We walked further down looking for the museum that housed the Statue of David. We walked through narrow streets that had small café’s where locals came and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Finally we approached a large square that had large museums on both sides. I entered one of them and asked someone where the museum that had the Statue of David and she told me it was in the building opposite of this one in the square. We walked around the square and found the entrance on the opposite side of the building.

The entrance was packed with people waiting in line to go in. It stretched outside and down the alley. We looked inside for a second to see how long the line was (and to see if we could sneak a peek of the statue from the lobby) but it was taking forever. We decided that maybe we should get back in the car and get to Pisa. It was already 1pm and we needed to be back by 5pm to have a rehearsal.

We got back into the car and this time Monty drove. We got out the GPS and set it to lead us to Pisa. As we tried to navigate our way out of town, the GPS basically got lost. It would tell us to go down streets that either didn’t exist or go down streets that were one-way in the wrong direction. We finally decided to ditch it and use our memory to get out of town. Luckily there were a few signs in the city that showed us the way to Pisa so we followed them and next thing we knew, we were back in the countryside.

Not driving this time, I had the opportunity to admire the Tuscan countryside in greater detail. Driving past more small towns, I was able to see the smaller details that separated the California landscape from Tuscany’s.

Once we got into Pisa, there was heavy traffic. We would look frequently down at our watches and noticing that we were running out of time. We were afraid that we might not make it back to the ship in time. However we were so far into town already, we figured we might as well just see the leaning tower and split. We were able to see the tower from a distance and we followed it to the base.

After looking for parking (which was no easy task), we walked to the tower. The large white cylinder from certain angles didn’t look like it was leaning, but as you walk around it, you can see the exaggerated lean. Around the tower, you can see almost every cheesy photo pose in existence displayed from tourists from all walks of life. Some are trying to push the tower up, some are trying to pull it back, others putting the tip of their index finger on the top of it. I figured I’d come up with my own and do as the tourists do.

The picture was crooked so I straightened it out with iPhoto.

Seeing that we were out of time, we walked quickly back to the car and with Frank driving this time, we tried to make our way back to the port. We tried to navigate our way back out of the city but we failed miserably. We kept hitting dead ends and there were no streets signs to help us. At one point we ended up in a courtyard and we couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. It was the blind leading the blind in that car and at every wrong turn we made, we would look down at our watches and see the time slipping away from us. Finally we followed an ambulance and he lead us out of the town and onto a major street.

We finally found signs for the freeway and as we were following them, we encountered several very beautiful Tuscan prostitutes who lined the roads getting onto the freeway. Usually prostitutes are very dirty looking, however these Tuscan prostitutes looked clean and almost like super models. One of them lifted up her skirt and turned around and showed us her posterior wearing a black g-string.

Finally on the freeway, we sped our way into Livorno. At the last minute we realized we needed to leave the car with gas in it. We pulled into the nearest gas station and put what ever we thought would be enough money into the tank. Since the gas was sold in liters and sold in Euros, we really had to guess. Eventually we put enough in and pulled away.

We had maybe 5 minutes to spare as we pulled up along the ship. We left the car by the ship where the Avis guy had told us and ran back on the ship where we barely made the rehearsal. Overall, the Tuscany region was full of surprises and I really enjoyed just observing the similarities and contrasts to my home in California. For anyone who wants to seek adventure and see old cities and sip great wine, I recommend these amazing Italian cities.           -DB