Florence / Pisa / Viareggio, Italy

Surprisingly, after all of the cities I have been to so far, Florence was one of my least favorite cities. That's not to say that it wasn't a nice place or that there wasn't anything to do, but the entire thing felt like one big tourist trap - it didn't feel like an authentic Italian city at all. Walking on the streets, you almost NEVER heard Italian spoken, mainly just English and other languages. All shopkeepers and locals tended to speak English as well. The people visiting seemed in a rush to simply see all the churches, museums, etc. before they had to leave, and didn't really care about doing anything else. After a few days I got sick of the city. Nonetheless, it was a pretty city:







I did end up meeting up with my friend Scott who was studying abroad there for the summer, which was fun. We ended up going out a few nights while we were there:



While we were in Florence, we took day trips to Viareggio and Pisa, which are about an hour away by train. Viareggio is just a typical beach town - not super pretty or anything, but very laid-back with beaches, small shops, and bars. I'm you could find much better beaches in Italy, but it offered a nice escape from Florence so we enjoyed it a lot:







There isn't a whole lot to say about Pisa. I think most people just go there for a day to see the leaning tower and leave, because that's about all there is to see there. It seemed like it was nice enough though from what I could tell from walking around:







I do think Florence is probably worth seeing, but unless you are really into the touristy stuff I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of time there. For me, it got old pretty fast.