Photos of Venice, Bardi, Florence and Pisa

I have put up the photos of Venice for awhile, didn't remember to post it up here.

2007_09_14 Venice

After Venice, I checked out of the nice hotel and started my backpacker travel again. First stop was to went North a bit to meet up with Alessandro. Alessandro came to UWA as an visiting researcher in 2005 and we had some great time together.
He has been back to Italy for awhile and was working at University of Bologna which is 40 mins train ride from Modena. However, we met up at Fidenza which is a bit more North as he planned to drive me to Bardi to see a castle. It's nice catching up with old friend.

2007_09_15 Bardi Castle with Alessandro

After the castle trip, I took a train South to Florence. It was nice to have Alessandro do the talking to get my train ticket.

Florence was my favorite place in Italy. It's so historical, artistic, grand and stylish. I was amazed by the sight of the Duomo when I came across it on my first night. And the city is beautiful at night. Old buildings with very big doors, full length windows showing the latest fashion, well lit plaza with grand gate. I'm just in awe.

Two days in Florence is just enough to know what is available. I want to come back one day. And I met some students from California State Polytechnic University, they were in Italy for the Formula SAE competition, building a car and race it with other universities in the world. When I told them I'm from UWA, they burst out their admiration on UWA Motorsports team. I was quite happy about that.

2007_09_15-17 Florence

I took a short train ride from Florence to Pisa to see the famous leaning tower. It was a rainy day and I was trapped in the rained and had to buy an umbrella at an ultra ripped off price. Anyhow, the leaning tower is cool. And I met a nice Taiwanese girl Han ZhenHui. She asked me to take some photos for her, and she helped me took some also. Then we went off doing other things and met again at the train station. She was reading a travel guide full of pictures written in Japanese (so much cooler than Lonely Planet) and planned to go to another small town call San Giorgnenanmitmkajdsj?@#$. I chatted with her and then decided to tag along since she had it all planned. Eventually we didn't get to the place since there was no bus coming back after we reached the train station that we had to change to bus. So anyhow, we decided to go to a restaurant and eat. The pizza was good!

Coming back to Florence it was after 9pm, and I was still thinking about the pig besides a market that I saw in the morning while I followed a guided tour. The legend is that you touch the the pig then you'll return to Florence one day. Then she accompanied me to fulfilled the Pig quest. And here's her blog in Chinese - Han*Han's A Story.

And here are the photos in Pisa.

2007_09_16 Pisa