Leaning Tower of Pizza!

11/8/11

Just kidding! I mean Pisa! This morning we woke up early and had a delicious buffet breakfast at the hotel (really a B&B). It the best breakfast so far with very, very good cappuccino.

After breakfast, we spoke to a lady at the bed and breakfast. She said that we could easily do one of the galleries today and take a train to Pisa. It sounded great to me. We headed to the Uffizi gallery first, best known for the birth of Venus and the old home of David, before he was moved inside of the Accademia. There is another David replica out front of Uffizi. We saw paintings by all sorts of artists including Rembrant. Unfortunately, we couldn't use a camera (for understandable reasons) so no pictures but we enjoyed it.

After leaving the gallery,  getting lost and given directions by a nice waitress who took pity in us, we found a wood work shop that had lots of sweet wooden toys, clocks, growing charts, etc. I could have bought the whole store but most items were very large. And Pinocchio is HUGE over here. I would assume, from the name, that he is Italian. I'll have to confirm that later. Anywho, there is as much Pinocchio as there is leather here, and not just Disney although that is big too :)

We made it back to the hotel to drop off some purchases and made our way to the train station to buy tickets to Pisa. We took the fast train and were there in an hour. We walked maybe 20 minutes and we were there! The tower is open again for visitors to climb after being closed for years for renovations. It was somewhat straightened and is now only 15 feet off its vertical axis. 

The tower was built in stages, it took over 200 years to build because (for unknown reasons) construction stopped midway for 100 years. It had three major architects, each of whom tried to correct the lean. It began leaning very soon after construction. When you look at it, it is very apparent that there are three separate sections, each section an effort to straighten the tower by balancing the weight. To no avail.

Included in the field of miracles is the duomo and the baptistery. We were a little pressed for time so we didn't buy any tickets to climb the tower or enter anything. It is a little disappointing to know the tower is still leaning and aging very quickly as are the other structures in the field. No one is sure when it will finally collapse but since it is mostly limestone and only covered with marble, that could happen in the near future.

We're on our way back to Florence ( Firenze in Italian) and we have dinner reservations at 8pm. We ended up on the slow train so we won't likely be back until 5:30 or 6pm. The place that we have dinner reservations is the best restaraunt in Florence (according to Rick Steve's) lucky us! And we didn't know that at the time we booked, it was just recommended by our hotel.

More later, tomorrow we leave Florence and head for Venice. I'm looking forward to seeing the sinking city. Only a few more days before we're back in the good ol' US of A! We'll be traveling everyday until we get home so hopefully we won't be too travel weary. See you all soon!