Honeymoon Part 4: Pisa, Lucca and the Jersey Shore?

The day after our cooking class we got a much later start to our day than we had planned. We still went ahead with our trip to Pisa and Lucca...but we were rather rushed in both locations because of it.

We went to Pisa strictly to see the leaning tower...because...that's why you go to Pisa. So we took the requisite "I'm holding up the tower pictures" and went on our merry way.

Then we went to Lucca. Sadly, Lucca was a little disappointingly boring BUT we did have the BEST lunch out of our entire two week stay in Italy!

Amazingly thin, crunchy pizza!

Foccacia...what Lucca is known for!

Very windy atop Tower Guinigi

Walking along the walled path of Lucca

Train Station

That night Chris and I were a little bit cranky and tired after dinner from our long day of traveling. As we headed back to our hotel, I noticed some very bright lights outside the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see a ton of video cameras and lights...and then I saw Pauly D's hair from the Jersey Shore. "OMG Chris!! It's them!!" to preface this story, my dad had emailed an article to me that very morning which mentioned that Snookie and J-Wow had been in a car accident in Florence while they were filming for the next season of the Jersey Shore. Florence isn't that big and we still had 3 more days there, so we were kind of on the look-out for them to begin with. Well, turns out they came right to us! Here the boys were, filming at a restaurant right outside our hotel!

Pauly D, Vinny, Ronnie

 

For the next hour and a half, we watched them order their food and eat while we basically hung out among the Crew and security guards for the show. They travel with QUITE a pack...altogether there were at least 20 people on crew and security duty while they were filming. We weren't allowed to use any flash, so our pictures came out pretty blurry, but they're still pretty good. Chris talked to an Italian Security Guard for most of the time...we were hoping that if we made friends with him he'd let us take a picture with the guys, but they are under contract while filming not to pose for any photos while on location. Bummer.

The most entertaining part of the meal was when Ronnie kept burping extremely loudly and pretty much had the entire restaurant, staff and their crew laughing so hard because it was completely obnoxious and happened every few minutes.

At one point, two young (drunk) girls from America came up to the crew and immediately started signing waivers so they could be on the show. They wanted to be seated right next to their table...well they took so long talking to the crew and signing their waivers, that the guys started to get up to leave as soon as the girls started to sit down. No bother to them though..they just proceeded to follow them down the street. Well...that didn't go so well for them. The boys told them numerous times to leave them alone and that they were terrible people...so the girls eventually backed off, rambling on about how rude the guys are and that they were never watching the show again. Right.

We witnessed a lot of different things during our time watching them. Some people from Florence came up and had no idea who they were, or what they were filming. I tried explaining it to an older Florentine couple who came up and asked me who they were and I became more and more uncomfortable as I was trying to explain/partly justify them.

"See...they're Italian, and they usually hang out at the Jersey Shore. And...they're obnoxious...but now they're famous, well..in America. They mostly party a lot...and they're filming here now! These are just the boys...the girls are somewhere too, two of them already got in a car accident yesterday..."

They literally were staring at me blankly like..."Is this for real?" They asked me what station this show appeared on. I said "MTV" and she looked at her husband and said "Oh! You like MTV" and he said "Yea...but I only watch the music videos, I usually don't enjoy any of the shows I've seen on their station" so I said "Yea....well....you won't like this show either."

They thanked me and went on with their night probably to listen to a live musician on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, as I ashamedly stayed behind to soak in more of the culturally brilliant MTV film crew...I'm not proud...

A few minutes later, some drunk Italian men walked by shouting Italian Curse words and saying things like "Go Back to America!" When a crew member followed them to make sure they were leaving their general vicinity, they threw a glass at him. It was pretty incredible: the general feeling I got from the local Italians there was that they were NOT happy the Jersey Shore was filming in Florence.

At one point, Mike the Situation was smoking a cigarette pretty close to us....he and Chris exchanged a manly head-nod, and that was the extent of our interaction with them.

The two girls on the left are the drunk girls chasing them down the street

We followed them for a few minutes before we realized we were officially stalkers, and decided we should probably go up to bed for the night. Altogether, it was QUITE the successful day!