Day 15 - Pisa and San Gimignano

Today was an absolutely awesome day! We got to see a lot of natural beauty, man manufactured beauty, have beautifully delicious food, and beautiful relaxation time. This was one of my favorite days of the trip so far and am excited to see what we will be doing the rest of the trip.

First we had the best breakfast of the trip so far at 8am this morning with freshly made breads and other goodies. Then we had a nice four hour bus ride to Pisa. I know that a bus ride may sound kind of boring, but I really enjoyed it a lot. It was nice to just get to relax, watch the scenery go by, and go into my own world in my audiobook when I wanted to. It was one of the most relaxing times that I have had on my trip thus far. When we finally arrived in Pisa, we were shuttled over to Piazza dei Miracoli which is the location of The Leaning Tower of Pisa. 

It was really cool to see how it looks so good after they finished stabilizing, cleaning, and restoring it. It exceeded my expectations by far; the whole area was very nice and well maintained. We got there around lunch time and our appointment to go to the tower was not until later, so we had a few hours to eat lunch, buy souvenirs, and take pictures with it.

Lunch was an interesting experience for a reason completely unrelated to any type of problem that you would typically associate with a restaurant and eating there. I ordered a pizza and while we were waiting for our food to be delivered, one of the waiters dropped a glass and it broke over in the kitchen area. I didn’t think too much about it and even made a joke about it. Then our food was delivered and I started cutting my pizza (they don’t cut the pizza for you over here). I started eating it and got about one-fourth to one-third of the way through and I noticed that there was something clear and jagged looking on my plate. My first thought was how a piece of ice got onto my tray, since they don’t seem to have ice very much over here either and no one at my table had any, so I picked it up. To my surprise, it was not a piece of ice, but a chunk of glass, about 1 cm² in size, had made its way onto my pizza! I showed my friends at our table and so then I checked over the rest of my pizza to make sure it didn’t have any on it, and was okay to eat. We were trying to think of how it could have gotten onto my pizza, and then I connected the dots; that there had been that glass broken not too long before my pizza was brought over to me, and that was the only reasonable explanation. I eat the rest of my pizza, being extra careful just in case there was another piece that I missed, but it seems to have been fine. After my meal I showed it to the waiter, and he was very apologetic, and I think he realized where it had come from, so they gave me my meal for free. I was okay with a free meal, since there didn’t seem to be any damage done.

Then we went looking around at all the shops and took some fun pictures and some cliché photos in front of it. Then we met up with everyone and Rae did her presentation on The Leaning Tower of Pisa. There were many different efforts in construction and after completion to correct the lean, but all were fruitless until the last one where they excavated the land and removed enough to stabilize it, so now it is stuck at a 4° tilt. Then we got walk up to the top of the tower, and this was more exciting than you would think, because although 4° doesn’t sound like a lot, it is very noticeable when you are walking up and down the stairs. When you were on one side, you would be leaning back trying to walk up the stairs, and when you were on the other side, you would be falling forward up the stairs. Oscillating back and forth like this made me feel kind of loopy, but it was certainly entertaining. The view from the top was fantasitic; you could see Pisa all the way to the mountain ridges. It was fun just to walk around it feeling the tilt of it and seeing the displacement of it all the way at the top; I believe it was about 3.9 meters displacement.

After we had finished our time up on the tower, we went over and toured the Duomo and Baptistery of the complex. They were both were interesting because they had been built slowly over different time periods and styles of architecture, so it made an interesting conglomeration. There were aspects of Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic all in this one building. They also apparently reused some of the marble from other buildings to construct it, because there were inscriptions chiseled into some of the blocks used on the outside that were oriented differently than they were on their previous building. The Baptistery was interesting because it had a dome that had some interesting acoustical properties to it. People were just whispering in there and it was so loud it there, and then they have a guy come in to sing a few notes because the sound lingers and echoes so long, he could do harmony with himself. It was pretty neat.

Then we hung around a little longer so that people could get all their shopping done and get any more photos they wanted. Then we shuttled back to the bus and were off again, this time to San Gimignano. 

This is was another two hour bus ride and was very relaxing after being out in the hot sunny weather today. The terrain and scenery in the Tuscany region is absolutely beautiful with the rolling hills, vineyards, trees, and Italian style homesteads. It is so calm, peaceful, and serene. When we finally arrived in this smaller Tuscan town, it seemed that way as well. Here we have a very nice hotel that is right off the town center square. We hiked up here to the hotel through the small streets because it would have been a little difficult for the bus to maneuver this. Then we had a little time to settle into our hotel before we had supper in the hotel on the top floor. They make their own wine here in San Gimignano, so we had to try some of it with supper. 

Tonight was one of our group dinners, so we had a delicious four course dinner of some kind of rice and vegetables, ravioli, peppered boar meat (I think), and strawberry crème dessert. This was probably my favorite meal of the trip so far because it was so good and it was also extremely filling! I fully enjoyed every minute of it, and I didn’t even mention the beautiful view that we had atop the hotel which is on top of a hill! You could see down into one of the valleys around San Gimignano, and the lovely countryside. It was so serene and nice change of pace from all the extremely chaotic, tourist filled cities that we had visited. If I were to take a vacation to Italy, I would definitely choose this to be the place; it seems so relaxing and magnificent.

After the awesome dinner we had, I headed down to our room and got to work on updating my photos and this journal/blog and just had a good time reminiscing on a good day in Tuscany, Italy!