Rosignano "Baking Soda Beach"

Today we decided to go with a few friends to a beach called Rosignano. We went to the train station and got train tickets. The train station is cool and you get the tickets from a machine.  From Florence to Rosignano, it was €10.80 and about an hour on the slow regional train. 

My train ticket.

Some of the trains. The bullet trains look cool! The train ride was good. We sped through the Tuscan countryside going through tunnels, passing apartments, vineyards, and sunflower fields.

Sunflower fields- they had already bloomed.

At the coast!

We finally arrived at Rosignano. It's a large town but to get to the beach we just walked through a nice, quiet beach neighborhood.

When we saw the water we were amazed....

This was just a small canal that went in that boats parked in. More on this canal later.

Da Beach!

The sand was beautiful white sand and the water was pretty warm. You could walk out pretty far and it didn't just drop off. There were no tourists. 

Ali and I at the beach

While we were at the beach we met a guy named Peter. Peter is an American student from Boston taking his time in getting his PhD in Piza. His parents are art historians and so he has spent about half his life in Italy and Florence. He knows English and Italian very well as a result and he teaches Italian classes to make a living. Peter informed us that the sand and strange color of the water wasn't really natural and that the white color of the sand actually comes from them dumping lots of sodium bicarbonate into the beach as a byproduct from an industrial area. It makes the water very blue and the beaches white from all the baking soda (and who knows what else). It's a great beach though. 

The sand can be balled up pretty easily here when it's wet.

I decided to walk up the beach some and I found this...

That big smokestack over there is a geothermal energy facility and I think much of the water is coming from there (and a few other places). There was LOTS of water flowing out of here and the current of this canal was pretty strong. The water was moving really fast. I think the canal I saw when I was walking to the beach provides water to the facilities and this is where the water drains back out. I think Rosignano beach is man made. Pretty cool! 

The Italians (and the rest of Europe) seem a bit ahead of America when it comes to going green. We have seen many smart cars and electric cars when here and no big trucks. They have lots of regulations on energy and we have seen huge fields of solar panels and windmills while on the train. It's really neat.

After talking with Peter for awhile, we all decided to catch the 7:30 train with him to Pisa. We would go out to eat in Pisa and get to see the leaning tower and some of the monuments. So we all headed back to the train station.

Across from the station, this cool neon sign flashed on and off. We went to the little bar inside for a bit to get some little snacks.

They had some cool glass blown altered bottles here. They are neat!

The view from the train to Piza- I love trains!

Piza

Ali crossing the Arno in Piza at night...

We stopped at a touristy (but good) trattoria (restaurant) not far from the leaning tower.

Pizza in Piza

Then after we ate, Peter left for his Apartment and we went to check out the tower.

Ali and I at the tower.

All of Piza's monuments are right next to each other. It's really cool to see the tower, the Duomo of Piza and another dome monument all next to each other. Pisa also has big fields next to their monuments that look beautiful.

Suddenly, the tower was falling over! But I helped it up.

The tower wasn't really as big as I thought it would be. That being said, it is still really really big and I always had trouble fitting it into the wide angle of my iPhone camera. It is just small in comparison to the Florence Duomo (but then again, everything is).

As we were heading back we stumbled upon a huge piazza square Peter told us about. It was filled with young people partying and had several pubs all with good music playing loudly. 

It was pretty wild. 

There were mobs of people hanging out and partying all over! Even as we were going across the bridge! Pisa really comes alive at night! Peter was right when he said that Pisa is a young city. We didn't see anyone older when we were there and there were young people everywhere! It's because there are 3 universities jammed into the small town. It's a pretty cool place! One we will definitely have to come back to sometime.

In all the commotion, we missed the train back to Florence by about 10 minutes! We now had to take the 1:12 bus back to Florence. A bunch of the girls went back to the party piazza because we still had about an hour an a half till the bus. Ali, Krysta (who organized the whole beach trip) and I opted to stay around the station so we were sure we would catch the bus.

Our bus ticket back. (Ali and I shared one and it is a ticket for 2). Everyone made it back from the Piazza and onto the bus. The bus ride was a little longer and there were a few stops but the bus was pretty nice.

Me on the bus.

We got home around 3am and Florence was pretty desolate (but not totally asleep) there were lots of street sweepers going around on the walk home. I have always thought they are so cool. What an adventure! The world is a really big place and now that we know how to use the trains, I think Ali and I are gonna try and travel a bit more. Tomorrow Ali and I will finish up a few assignments we have for the week and then school will start again Monday. I'm starting to really like study abroad!