Italia

After Nice we took a train to Pisa, Italy.  We had two connecting trains so it was a bit of a long day, about six hours of travel.  The cabins in the train were like the ones in Harry Potter, pretty cool.  There was even a food trolley!  Unfortunately, we didn't have a reservation and it was assigned seating so we were stuck sitting in the fold down chairs in the hallway with our backpacks under us.  Every time somebody walked down the aisle (at almost every stop)  we had to get up to let them by. 
Once we got to Pisa we took a bus and then walked the rest of the way to our hostel.  By that time we were pretty tired of carrying our backpacks around.  Our hostel was right next to the Leaning Tower, it was a town house converted into a hostel with only three guest rooms.  We were in a six bed mixed dorm.  The next morning we went to see the tower and take some touristy pictures, after we headed to our next destination, Florence.
It was nice walking around the city, it is easy to get lost in Florence so we didn't make many plans (not that we would really anyway).  Most places are closed on Mondays (which was our full day there) because of this we didn't hit the usual tourist spots and just walked around enjoying the city.  We got some delicious pizza and went to see the duomo.  Rain was in the forecast in the morning but we didn't really worry about it because our hostel isn't too far away and it was a warm afternoon.  In the late afternoon when we had wandered about an hour away from our hostel the clouds above us started looking very nasty so we started to head home.  I was thinking we may get caught in a light rain but I thought we would probably make it back in time to miss it.  I was wrong on both accounts.
On our way back, when passing the Duomo, all of the sudden people started screaming and running away from the building.  I had no idea what was going on, thinking maybe someone had gotten hurt or something really horrible had just happened.  We waited a ways back to see what happened, then came the first raindrops where we were standing.  Apparently rain had started by the Duomo first and so people started to scatter.
Udara & I continued on our way, disregarding the rain and hoping to make it back soon as we already couldn't remember which street we were supposed to turn on.  Under every overhang people were huddled for shelter and we were two of the few walking through the weather.   Then came the first flash of lightening.  Lovely!  Then came the true downpour.  Relentless showers of rain poured and winds blew through the streets making it very difficult to look at our map.  Finally the rain got so bad we found shelter under a closed store's overhang.  When we were standing there people tried to sell us umbrellas about 15 times.  As the thunder & lightening got closer the rain got much worse.  Udara & I started to sing the thunder buddy song from Ted...it was pretty amusing.
The rain died down a little for a few minutes so we went on our way again, this time in the right direction.  On our way we walked through a street which had a lot of vendor carts with cloth overhangs.  These overhangs had been collecting water since the storm started (about 45 minutes before.) Riiiiiight exactly when I walked under one of them the cloth gave way and I got a waterfall on my head.  Udara was thoroughly amused by this.  Finally after about an hour being lost in the rain we made it back to our hostel, looking like drowned cats.
Today we checked out of our hostel in the morning and headed to the train station yet again to make our way to Rome.  We are now in our HOTEL in Rome, it is very quiet compared to what we have been used to the past week.  We went to check out the Roman ruins and Colosseum tonight.  Had a good dinner four cheese gnocchi and tiramisu!  We will be here the next few days then off to Venice (probably.)