Italy – Pisa

In route from our two-day stop in Florence to our three days on the French Riviera we hopped off the train for few hours to see one of the items on Chris’s European bucket list – the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Our typical plan for a stop like this would be to store our two carry-ons and at least on backpack at the luggage check at the train or bus station.  Unfortunately for us, the strike from the day before had unexpected carry-over… the luggage handlers decided they wanted an extra day off.  So, we were stuck dragging all our luggage through the city.  Uggh! 

*pulls out soap box, dusts it off, and climbs up*  If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll mention it here, and again later when I write about two future trips… the Europeans, and especially the Southern Europeans, really know how to mess up your travel plans with a strike.  One would think, in a country facing bankruptcy and bail-out from the European Union, the citizens would be happy just to have jobs.  Not the case.  It seems several hundred years of not having to do a darn thing except accept money for not actually doing anything at your government job has made people a bit ungrateful.  That’s fine Italy, Greece, and Portugal, I’m happy to take my tourist dollars elsewhere in the future and recommend that my friends to the same.  France, Switzerland, and England are quite lovely, and they've never left us stranded.  *climbs down, puts soap box away*

Luggage it tow, we walked through Pisa to the Piazza dei Miracoli.

The Leaning Tower is actually the bell tower for the Pisa Cathedral, and the Piazza Dei Miracoli is home to the cathedral, the bell tower and an absolutely amazing baptistery (more on that later).  The 183 foot tall tower began leaning almost as soon as construction started in 1173.  Corrections were attempted as construction progressed (if you look at the pictures, the lean is a little more pronounced at the bottom of the tower), but nothing was able to correct the lean completely.  Even today, after massive stabilization efforts, the tower is still almost 13 feet off center.

As luck would have it, no bags of any kind are allowed in the Leaning Tower, so we were able to store our luggage for the short amount of time we were actually climbing the tower.  Climbing the almost 300 steps to the top was no easy task.  The lean in the tower really messes with your balance (kind of like when you spin around in circles, then try to run).

I had one hand on each of the walls for most of the trip up and back down, just trying to make myself feel less like I was going to tip over.  The climb was worth it, however.  The views of the Tuscan countryside and Pisa were lovely.

After climbing back down the tower and reclaiming our bags, we made our way to the cathedral.  Nothing too spectacular to report from that stop, but our next stop, the baptistery, was amazing!!  The building is acoustically perfect, and the demonstration of those acoustics is reason enough to make a stop in Pisa.  Check it out!

Out of time, we made our way back to the train station for the very long train ride to the Riviera.  We were hoping to catch a few glimpses of the Cinque Terre on the way, but most of the train tracks were tunneled through the mountains.  We did catch a few seconds worth of brightly colored houses and crystal blue water near the town of Riomaggiore (we think).  We would have loved to make a stop here, but the region’s grand opening after a series of devastating landslides wasn't set to take place until a few weeks after our visit. 

At nearly midnight that evening, we finally arrived at our hotel in Nice, France, ready to tackle the Riviera the next morning!

Italy – Florence

A long, long time ago in a kingdom far, far away, we went on vacation to Italy.  I wrote about our adventures right up until we got sucked into the never-ending halls of the Vatican.

Now that I have nothing to do all day, I have plenty of time to get everyone caught up on our vacation adventures.  Please, hold your applause.

Despite the Vatican’s best efforts, we did eventually make it out of the building and back to the train station.  The train ride to Florence went quickly, and before we knew it, I was desperately texting my friend Lindsey.  I had envisioned a slow-motion run through the train station where we met in the middle with a huge, spinning hug (all while Chris looked on wondering what was wrong with his wife).  Lindsey did make it to the station in time for our arrival, but we somehow missed one another thanks to some serious delays in the Italian cell phone system’s text delivery protocol.  Eventually, we did find one another at our hotel, and seeing her smiling face again for the first time in months was no less wonderful.

Lindsey lived in Florence for several months after she finished college, teaching English and generally enjoying the Italian lifestyle.  She was kind enough to act as our Florentine tour guide for the next two days.  First stop – dinner at her favorite pizzeria, Pizzeria Speta.  We each picked out one of their delicious pizzas and dug in!  Yum!!

The next morning, we started our day with a walk to the Accademia, home to the world famous Statue of David.  Now, I’ve seen pictures of David, but they do not do justice to the real thing.  The scale and attention to detail apparent when you’re staring up into his marble-colored eyes is nothing short of amazing.  He also has a really cute butt.  A fact the gift shop capitalizes on quite gleefully.

Source

We took in the rest of the exhibits at the Accademia before heading for the Duomo.  On the way to the Duomo, we stumbled onto the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum.  This museum is home to a series of working models based on the drawings of Da Vinci.  Best part – they were hands on!

We played for a while, then finished our walk to the Duomo.  Construction on the Duomo was started in 1296 and was completed in 1436.  The Duomo is topped by, what was for a very long time, the largest dome in the world, created by Brunelleschi.  It is still the largest brick dome anywhere in the world.  The façade of the cathedral is covered in white, green, and pink marble.  It looks a little crazy compared to the relatively tame stone-colored facades of most European churches.

Despite the magnificent exterior, the interior of the church didn’t rank high on our list of things to see.  We did, however, want to climb to the top of the dome for a close-up look at the rapture scene painted on the interior of the dome and for the magnificent views of Florence and surrounding countryside.  

We diligently made our way up the 7 million steps (that might be a slight exaggeration) and squeezed into a few really tight spaces between the interior and the exterior of the dome before finally making it to the top.  The views did not disappoint!

Famished from our long walk up and down the stairs of the Duomo’s dome, we headed to one of Lindsey’s favorite lunch spots, Trattoria Mario.

This tiny family-run restaurant is open only for lunch, serves whatever is written on the menu that day until it’s gone, and believes in filling every chair in their shop.  That means you may be making some new friends over lunch!  We wiggled our way to our table, met our new lunch buddy, and ordered what we thought sounded good.  The food was wonderful, but it was our after-lunch snack of vin santo and cantucci (wine and cookies) that really hit the spot.  This is an Italian practice that should be adopted by the US right away.

After lunch, we wound our way through the city’s central market, admiring the fresh produce, dried fruit, scarves, and some interestingly shaped pasta (seriously, they will make pasta into about any shape).  We ended our stroll at the Uffizi Gallery, home to the Medici family’s extensive art collection.  The Medici family was a major patron of Renissance art in Florence, and the Uffizi Gallery is housed in one of the family’s former palaces.  The gallery was opened to the public in 1765, making it one of the oldest art museums in the world.  Countless works of art from some of the biggest names in history line the walls of the palace’s many rooms and statues spill out into the main hallways.

The courtyard between the two main wings of the Uffizi opens to the banks of the River Arno near the often-photographed Ponte Vecchio.

Like Rialto Bridge in Venice, the Ponte Vecchio is a pedestrian bridge lined with shops.  Unlike Rialto Bridge, the shops on Ponte Vecchio are charming and add to the atmosphere on and around the bridge.  We crossed the bridge and made our way to the Palazzo Pitti, a large open space filled with people enjoying the later afternoon sun and scoops of gelato.  We certainly couldn’t resist another chance for gelato.

We finished up our day in Florence with a stop at the Basilica di Santa Croce and a St. Patrick’s Day dinner, Italian style.

The next morning was the day that Lindsey and I had been looking forward to since she left our little island over six months earlier.  We were going to take a real, Italian cooking class from a real, Italian chef!  Lindsey did a great post on our cooking adventures too, so if you’d like to hear her thoughts, check it out here.  We hopped a train for the quick ride to the neighboring town of Lucca where our cooking class was to take place.  We arrived at the hotel and sipped on a cup of cappuccino while waiting for our fellow classmates to arrive.

We were then escorted into the classroom/kitchen where we were handed aprons and our very own cookbooks to take home!  We chopped...

and drank...

and mixed, and rolled...

and chopped some more...

 then we boiled, stirred, and enjoyed the wonderful smells...

and tastes...

We cooked for hours.  In the end, we were treated to a mid-afternoon feast that included everything from traditional spaghetti bolognese to mushroom marsala with penne, curry chicken gnocchi to pear and ricotta stuffed chocolate ravioli.

Talk about yum!!  The best part is, I know how to make all of these dishes at home now – including the pasta.  I never knew pasta was so easy.

We returned to the heart of Lucca from the hotel only to find out that the train workers were on strike (gotta love southern Europe).  Our hopes of a leisurely late afternoon bike ride around the city walls were squashed after a less-than-encouraging discussion with the ticket person at the bus station.  We purchased what I would call “stand-by” tickets for the last bus out of town that afternoon.

The lady flat out told us the bus was oversold, but after an hour of worrying, we were surprised to see two busses pull into the stop!  Bless my husband for putting up with two crazy worriers for that hour – Linds, we really shouldn’t feed each other’s fears like that!

Sometimes life has a way of making things work out for the best.  While, we didn’t get to enjoy the bike ride we had planned, we did get to enjoy more vin santo and cantucci on the steps of the flood-lit Duomo.

We talked late into the night, until we were all shivering from the cold.  I’ll never argue with spending quality time with my friends.

PS:  I miss you, Linds... you should come see me.  Or, really, I should come see you.  That would be much more fun.

The Alamo and San Antonio Missions

After a failed attempt at finding San Antonio’s famous River Walk earlier this week, we decided to give sightseeing in our new town another chance.  We did our research this time: the Alamo is immediately adjacent to the River Walk… Pearl Brewery is immediately adjacent to something called the Museum Reach of the River Walk… the two sections are not at all close to one another.  While performing said research, we discovered that San Antonio is home to four Spanish missions, in addition to the Alamo.  We decided to start our day at the Alamo, then follow the National Parks Service’s map through the other four missions.

The Alamo complex is made up of several buildings, including some of the old fort walls and, most famously, the fort’s church (that’s the buildings you see in all the pictures).  We started our visit in the beautiful gardens surrounding the fort before making our way through the other buildings.

Then, we crossed the street and took a stroll on the real River Walk.  This section of the river looked much more like we expected.  Restaurants, hotels, and shops lined both sides of the quiet, tree-lined river, and people strolled leisurely along the banks or took in the sights from one of the river taxis.  We are planning to make many more trips to the River Walk during our time here.  Next time, we’re planning to visit at night when all the trees are lit up and the restaurants are in full swing.

Next up, the first mission on our list, Mission Concepcion.  The inside of this mission’s church has been restored to match the original appearance.
   

We followed the NPS map to Mission San Jose, the largest and most interesting of the four missions.

Next, we stopped at Mission San Juan.  Construction at this site made this a quick stop.

On the way to our next stop, we detoured to the remnants of an aqueduct that used to provide irrigation water to the farm land surrounding the missions.

Our final stop of the day was Mission Espada.  This church, like the churches at all four missions, is still home to a Roman Catholic congregation, and we were treated to an outdoor broadcast of the Spanish-language mass being conducted inside the church while we walked around the mission grounds.

Having just spent the last two years touring the best of Europe’s churches and castles, the missions and their churches were rather humble, but walking through a bit of American history was a nice change of pace.  Check out all the pictures in the pictures tab.