Pisa and Cinque Terre, Italy

After getting to Florence we promptly rented a car and took off on a last minute road trip. Like I have said before, we have travelers A.D.D. and wanted to go visit the tower of Pisa and see the costal buildings of Cinque Terre. Plus driving through the Italian Tuscany was sure to be beautiful. 

Diving around the rolling hills of Tuscany did not disappoint. At some points it was like driving through a painting. With old vineyards on every side, and where the Italian cypresses did not look out of place (am I the only one who thinks they look out of place here in the states?). 

The Tower of Pisa is huge!!! and man oh man is it leaning. I mean, we have all seen pictures of the place, but it is so much more impressive than I thought it would be. WOW!

We took our time wondering around and laughing at literally every other person taking the, "look at me, I'm holding up the leaning Tower of Pisa" pictures. Then after deciding to take one ourselves we learned how hard that picture really is capture. 

^^such enthusiasm^^
After the leaning tower we stopped at a beach town to walk around, grab some gelato, and dip our toes in the Mediterranean. We had to wake Lizzy up from a short nap in order to accomplish this, but were pretty sure she would fall right back to sleep after getting back into the car.... we were SOOO wrong.

When we packed back into the car on our way to Cinque Terre, our little baby girl was a mess. She was tired. Tired from lack of sleep, tired of being in the car, and I'm pretty sure tired of looking at my face. She cried almost the whole 45 minutes to where we thought we would find the cute towns of Cinque Terre (her worst car ride still to date). We thought you could only walk to these towns... so we tried to find the trail head.... drive and drive we did with no idea where we were going. 

Finally we found the beautiful cliffs and could see the colorful towns below us, but still no way to get to them. Almost giving up we stopped at a railroad station and asked for help. Turns out we were wrong, you could also take a train into the towns. So after a miserable car ride, we were finally rewarded. We got Lizzy out of the car and she immediately fell asleep in the ergo baby. 

This was such a last minute whim of a road trip that we did not even know which of the five coastal towns we wanted to visit. So after asking a local girl which her favorite one was we grabbed the first train to Vernazza. 

We got there right before sunset. With fresh air, the view, eating sea food by the sea, and a sleeping baby made the car ride worth it. We were all content on the late night drive back to Florence. It kinda felt like we were in high school again with my two best friends.

Blake dropped us off at the hotel and we girls went to sleep... Blake on the other hand had a little adventure out on his own.  

While attempting to return the car at 2am, he found everything closed. To set the scene the car rental return was located under a large highway overpass, it was dark and far from anything. Walking around trying to find how to at least drop off the keys, he was approached by two Italians who looked like they walked straight out of an 80's mobster movie. They professed that he could just leave the keys with them (or at least that's what Blake interpreted their Italian as), but not trusting the two to get with in 10 feet of him, he ended up running under the over pass to the closed airport and found a barred up window to throw the keys through. Then walked to a gas station and finally found a cab driver to get him back to the to hotel. We tried to sleep in, but with a full day of Florence ahead of us it was no use.