David Grajal

Lucca is my favorite Italian city so far. It has beautiful city walls, old architecture, vivid orange and yellow buildings, narrow streets, lovely cafes, traffic closed to cars in the city center, tasty Tuscan food and incredibly relaxed people. Furthermore there weren’t hordes of tourists, only some of them and they all looked Italian. This city and its surrounding were an independent kingdom during Renaissance and until Italian reunification but it doesn’t look like that. There are no big palaces, great avenues or huge cathedrals. Everything in this city looks dry and cold, serious and melancholic.

Roman amphitheater square

A visit to Italy must include a visit to the most famous tower in the world. The leaning tower of Pisa surprised me a lot. I’ve seen a lot of pictures of the tower since childhood and I thought it was a really tall tower. In reality the tower was quite short!. Moreover I always thought the tower and the cathedral where isolated, alone and really far from the city because the pictures I’ve seen only had a beautiful green grass and the tower. In fact, the Piazza del Doumo o Piazza della Miracoli is in the middle of the city.

Leaning tower of Pisa

I climbed the tower. You can feel the tower has something wrong while climbing. Once you reach the top the view is fantastic! The cathedral is fantastic but it is mostly ignored because the leaning tower claims all the attention.

In Pisa I was hosted by Lia and her roommates. After dinner, they just took some instruments and improvised a music session. I’m not able to play any musical instrument and I’m absolutely fascinated with these people, it was so easy for them, just a game, to improvise and something beautiful without any preparation. In that house I met a guy who completely fitted the Italian stereotype. Loud, funny and hairy. He used millions of gestures while speaking. He is Sicilian, which makes sense. Southern Italians are the people that came to my mind when I think about Italian people. It happens the same in Spain, when foreigners people think about Spanish people they don’t think about somebody like me but the typical Spanish you can easily find in Southern Spain.

Surfing Lia's couch

I must admit I’m not into arts.That must be the reason I didn’t like Florence at all. I did the touristic visit to the Galleria degli Uffizi where there are lots of masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance, but I found myself just walking thought the corridors, only occasionally looking at the famous pictures. I didn’t even visit the Accademia Gallery where the most famous statue on the world is (Michelangelo’s David). I felt happy just looking at the copy at Palazzo Vecchino. As I said, I’m not interested in classical art. I enjoy a lot more an science or technology museum that a pictorical museum.

David with Michelangelo's David (The copy)

More interesting is Florence’s architecture. The city is full of nice buildings. I love the Ponte Vecchio bridge and Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral. This cathedral is multicolored and clean, really beautiful from outside and completely different to the older, mostly Gothic Spanish churches.

Brunelleschi's huge dome

On Florence I surfed Alessandro’s couch and he fed me with a non-so-Italian Curry Risotto and an amazing Tuscan Bistecca a la Fiorentina. It was great!

Surfing Alex's couch

Bologne is small, beautiful city that it is not included yet on the popular touristic tours. It is a very particular city with a special soul because all the streets on the city center have covered walkways known as porticos. This particular feature gives Bologne a very powerful, serious appearance.

Postico street with colored houses

Wikitravel says that if you point yourself on the point where several big avenues cross, you can’t see any tree on the streets. It is true, you can just see beautiful, old buildings built with stone. In Bologne is where the oldest Italian university is located, which is also the oldest university in the western world. I’ve been there and it’s impressive. I had a similar thrilling feeling when I visited Pavia’s university. You must feel something different when you go to classes on this old, historic buildings. After listening so many lectures even the old stone walls are full of knowledge.

I arrived in Venice the day the carnival started. Venice is a magical place, but in carnival is even more special because there are a lot of people wearing really elaborated, classical customs that add a lot to the experience. You need to visit it without prejudices and with an open mind. Yes, Venice is crawled. Yes, it is a tourist trap. But still you need to go there because it is something you need to do if you are visiting Italy.

Venize main channel from Rialto Bridge

A good experience was to get lost in Venice. Without a map and with a poor knowledge about the city – I must admit I thought the city was 10 times smaller and that there were only a few streets with channels – I just started walking and after a while I was completely lost with no tourist or local trying to sell something around. It was just me, the city and the occasional boat and that was fantastic. Another nice experience was to wear a mask and a robe and took pictures with the people on amazing costumes all over the city, particularly on San Marco square. My best experience was at night, when I took a boat from San Marco’s square to go back to the train station sailing thought the big channel. It was absolutely magical.

That's me, on St. Mark Square

I couchsurfed with Massimo Benelli, a very well know couchsurfer that require their guests to wrestle against each other. I heard from this guy when I first joined CS and I’ve been hearing from him from time to time since then. And I finally met him! He taught me how to wrestle and I fought against Amin, a Turkish couchsurfer and also Jürgen, a huge German. Obviously they kicked my ass but It was a different, kind of weird, experience. At least, I learned  wrestling!

Carnival's masks are amazing