Just for Matt......

Matt--this post is just for you!

Here I am in Pisa, after a little shopping at the lovely, upscale tourist shops.  Hmmmm, I wonder what could be in this bag?????

Oh look, here I am with this treasure right in front of the tower:

And I carried it all the way to the top!

Oh, the things a Mom will do for her son!
Love you the most!

Sunday in Pisa--and yes, It Really LEANS!

We had a great nights sleep last night, and were up very early this morning--4 a.m. for David!

We had a leisurely start, and after some computer time and a couple of espressos at our apartment we walked to the train station.  Florence is a small, very walkable city, it's only about 10 minutes to the train station!

We bought our tickets for the next train to Pisa, and had just a short wait.  It was a nice ride through the Tuscan countryside,  about 1 hr 20 minutes.  The train we chose just happened to be the "milk run" and stopped at every station, but we were in no hurry so we just relaxed and enjoyed the scenery.  I tried to take a few pictures, but it's pretty hard to do from a fast moving train with dirty windows.

There were some pretty spots, looking like the typical Tuscan countryside that we always think of--with tall cyprus trees, red roofed villas and vineyards.  But most of it was just rolling green hills or farmland.  Going thru the small villages and towns--well, the prettiest areas of town are NOT usually at the train station!

The train pulled into Pisa about 10:15,  we exited the station and looked for the big arrows to the tower, or campanelle, as it is called.  Hmmmmm-no big obvious directions, but we finally found a map, and went to check it out.  Well, lots of other people had checked it out with their fingers--because it was all worn off in spots, and we couldn't tell what was what!

You'd think this would be obvious!  We decided to just follow the people with the backpacks--and we eventually found it.  It's quite a hike from the station. Here's our first view, and it really does lean!

The closer we got to the tower, the more people there were--it was crazy busy.

We went straight to the ticket office to buy our tickets for the tower--you all really didn't think we'd pass up an opportunity to climb something, did you?  Kinda $pendy at 15 Euros each.  But worth every penny!

We had a bit of a wait--our tickets were for about 1 1/2 hours later.  We found a little cafe, and bought our breakfast of spinach and ricotta cheese tart.  We walked around looking at all the junky tourist shops, and of course had to buy just a couple of small souvenirs.  I really need a Leaning Tower of Pisa fridge magnet!

We took several pictures--actually several too many!  It's hard to capture how much the tower leans--for some reason it seems much more dramatic in person.  Here a just a few of my favorite shots:

The Church of St. Mary (founded in 1064) is a very pretty cathedral with inlaid marble on the exterior.  We did take a quick look at the interior, but there was a service at the time, so we didn't want to walk around and intrude.  No pics allowed, as usual.  There is also a baptistery right next to the church, also decorated in very ornate marble.  Construction on it was started in 1153.  Finally, the Bell Tower was added in 1173.  According to historical records, the designer was anonymous.  As the tower started to lean immediately after completion, he likely did not want his name associated with it!

Here's the church:

And the Baptistry:

It was time to line up for our climb--they allow exactly 30 minutes for each group to go up, have a look around, and come back down.  They have a drill sargent  guide that moves you along, and she really cracks the whip!  Good thing these Climbin' Lundburys are in good shape.

This is looking straight up at the tower while we were waiting in line:

While we were climbing up the tower, it was very obvious that it leans--you could really feel the lean! The stairs were narrow and winding, and the steps are very smooth and worn down with time and thousands of footsteps:

But we were very careful to NOT do this:

Finally we made it to the top, it's really a very easy climb compared to the Tower of Notre Dame.  Only 300 steps up, and worth every one of them.  The view is wonderful:

And here we are at the top:

After a short time at the top, our dear guide gently (ha!) informed us it was time to go down.  300 steps down--a piece of cake!

After our nice climb we wandered back through the lovely town of Pisa.  It's very charming, with narrow winding streets.  Lot's of shops that looked quite interesting, but most were closed as it's Sunday.

We decided a nice lunch was in order, so we found a sidewalk cafe and each ordered a pasta dish and a salad to share.  I had the gnocci pera talegga (that's gnocci with pear and cheese) and David had the tagliatelle ci fungi--wide noodles with mushrooms.  Both were delicious, and we enjoyed every bite!

We found our way back to the train station, bought our return tickets and hopped on board.  The return train was quite crowded, but it was still a relaxing ride back to Florence.

We had a wonderful day in Pisa!

We also had a very exciting evening--at the laundromat!  After 2 weeks, some our clothes could stand on their own, I think!  But we're good to go for a few more days, and I'm sure we smell better, too!

Tomorrow in Florence:  An early morning visit to the central market,  then who knows what else the day will hold....stay tuned!

Fabulous Florence!

Saturday morning came pretty early for the Travelin' Lundburys--we were all packed and ready to check out of our apartment.  The landlord was right on time, so we lugged our luggage to the vaporetto stop.  One last ride down that beautiful Grand Canal to the train station--ahhhh Venice!  We loved you, but it's time to leave you, we are soooo tired of being lost!

Of course it took us much less time to get to the station that on our "dry run" day, so we had 1 1/2 hours to kill.  Hmmmmm what to do?  Well, an espresso is always a great idea, here's David having an espresso the Italian way, standing at a little table:

And here's the very busy, no nonsense Italian baristas (or is that baristos??) They are VERY serious about their coffee here in Italy:

Did we have a pastry to go with that espresso?  Of course we did--a delicious brioche marmelleta, only 1 Euro!  By the way--the pastry lady was pretty serious, too!

The train was right on time, and when it pulls in to the station, you don't want to dilly dally around!  There is a big rush to board, with lots of jockeying with those annoying rolling suitcases and back packs, ours included.  We found our seats without any problems, and safely stowed our suitcases in the overhead luggage rack--seemed to be much better than on a plane.  Here I am relaxing, reading my Nook.  It was hard to see much of the countryside on this ride, so we just relaxed and read!

  We pulled into Florence right on time, and again the BIG rush to get off the train with all that luggage.  It certainly didn't help any that people were trying to get ON the train before all the passengers got off!
We found our way to the taxi line, and we were soon off to our apartment.  It was a short ride across the river, through some very narrow winding streets.  At two corners, our driver had to back up and re-negotiate those very tight spots.  I was afraid he was going to scrape the sides of his taxi, but I'm sure he's used to it!

Our apartment is in the old town part of Florence, just across the river Arno from all the tourist hustle and bustle, which suits us just fine.  It's on a v-e-r-y narrow lane.  We rang the bell to be let in, and were greeted by our very friendly host.  She showed us to our apartment, and we were welcomed with a lovely fruit bowl,  and pastries and yogurt for breakfast.   She kindly gave us directions to the best cafe, espresso shop and grocery store.  How nice!

WOW!  Another great apartment.  This one is smaller, but very charming.  It's in a very old building (duh!) and has a wonderful courtyard with little tables, and even some "sun" chairs! Here are a few pictures of this pretty little garden:

 That's our apartment kitchen window in this picture:

And here we are, having an "end of the day, glad to be in Florence drink" (and smooch--I guess David has forgotten all about that squid ink stuff......)

We quickly unpacked a bit, and hit the streets.  We were excited to explore Florence!
We very carefully noted the cross streets and landmarks on our way out of our neighborhood--we might be a bit "gun shy" after being lost so often in Venice!  But no problems here--our map actually seems to be accurate, unlike in Venice.

We explored our immediate neighborhood a bit, it's kid of sleepy and quiet--a nice change from Venice!
We came across a beautiful church,  The Santa Maria Novella.  We went in to look around, it was beautiful!  No pictures allowed, again.  But here's the exterior:

 There was also a gelato shop right in the piazza, and it was definitely gelato time! Flavor of the day: green apple and peach--very good.

We crossed the river Arno on the Amerigo Vespucci bridge, and turned down a likely looking little side street.  It was past time for some lunch, so we chose a little cafe and shared a pizza and beer.  We noticed  a young man next to us eating a big pot of mussels--yum!  Maybe we can remember where that cafe is for dinner one night!

We turned down another likely looking street, and there it was-- Il Duomo!  The dome of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.

This church was started in 1296, with work on the dome starting in 1420.  It took 16 years to finish the dome!   It was engineered by Felippo Brunelleschi, and is architecturally significant in it's design.  At that time it was the largest brick dome ever built, the interior of the dome is constructed in a herringbone brick pattern.  It is one of the largest churches in Italy.
The exterior of the church is very ornate, inlaid marble in white, pink, green and black.  It is beautiful!
(And very hard to get a good picture of, as there are buildings all around)

Here is the beautiful bell tower:

And the church:

We walked around the outside, admiring the amazing marble work.  We realized the line to get into the church was really not very long, and even though it was close to closing time, we decided we just couldn't wait to see the interior.  With the exterior being this magnificent, the inside had to be the best yet.....

 We walked in the door,  our eyes slowly adjusting to the low light.  We were stunned!  It was very plain.  Very, very plain.  Now, I'm not saying it's not beautiful in it's own way, but our expectations were high after seeing the outside.

There is very little interior decoration.  The vault is quite plain, but stately:

The columns are huge, here's a picture of David beside one of them:

The main chapel does have a beautiful frescoed ceiling:

The floors are inlaid marble, beautifully done in several different patterns.  The floors were my favorite design element of this church:

We spent about an hour inside the church, and felt that we had seen all  we wanted to see.  We did enjoy it's simple beauty, we had just been very surprised by it's simplicity.

Back out onto the street, we  decided to make our way back across the river towards "home".  We enjoyed a leisurely stroll back, just look at this view from the bridge.  I have been thinking about my sister in law Cheryl today--she would love this! 

We stopped along the way to pick up a couple of sandwiches for dinner, and at a small grocery store for a few important supplies--like wine! 

Much to our relief, we are finding that navigating around Florence is MUCH easier than Venice, whew!

We found our apartment without any problem, and settled in for a nice evening.  A lovely, relaxing drink in the garden, then a simple supper.  Early to bed for the Lunds--it's been a loooong day!

Tomorrow:  a train trip to Pisa!

Final Friday in Venice

Today was our last day in Venice, and as much as we have enjoyed our time here, we are ready to move on to Florence and our next adventure!  As I said yesterday, we both think 4-5 days would be plenty of time for Venice--but then I'd rather have too much time than not enough, especially the way we get lost......

Our plan for the morning was to go to the Doge's Palace.  This is a huge palace built right next to The Basilica of San Marco in San Marco Square.  A Doge was the ruling head of the government in the time of the Venetian empire.  The palace dates from the 1400's, and has seen many Doges in it's time.
It is massive in scale, and the visit took us from one end of the palace to the other--up and down 4 floors, including the prison and dungeons.  We spent almost 3 hours exploring the palace.  Again, photos were not allowed in most parts of the palace, but I was able to snap a few in the areas open to photography.  There were some very interesting parts that I'd love to share, but sadly, no photos in those areas!

The palace is designed in a "U" shape with a very large inner courtyard space.  The top of the "U" is the edge of the Basilica San Marco, that amazing church with the fabulous mosaics we visited a couple of days ago.  The palace sits right on the waters edge, and has beautiful lagoon views from the windows.
Here is a view of just part of the exterior:

The detail of the exterior of this building is amazing; elaborately carved decoration covers just about every square foot of it.  Here's just a small sample:

Most of the floors were inlaid marble:

I was able to take a pic of the entrance and the very ornate ceiling:

This ceiling and others in the palace are actually carved and gilded wood!  Each room had a different design, some with very detailed frescos, and others with just the gilded wood carving on a colored background.  All were extraordinarily beautiful.

The palace has many, many rooms.  Each room was used for a very specific function in their government, as was nicely explained on a placard.  One of the most interesting rooms was the map room--it had two huge, beautiful globes--one of the world and one of the heavens.  The walls were covered with painted maps of different countries-as they were in the 1500's!

Another very interesting room was a general meeting room, which the sign said was the largest single room in any palace in Europe.  It was lined with very large paintings, and one whole end wall was a single canvas--the largest canvas painting in the world. It took the artist over 4 years to finish it.

The palace also has a fascinating collection of old weapons and armor dating back to the 1400-1500's.  Some of the metal helmets, shields and even weapons were beautifully decorated.  The full body armor was pretty amazing--just to think of how heavy and awkward it must have been to wear this into battle--not to mention hot!

We also went down into the dungeon and prison area of the palace.  It sure was an interesting contrast to the upper areas of the palace.

The doors are very thick, with very secure looking locks.  I don't imagine  many prisoners escaped from this prison.  If you look carefully, you can see that each cell door has a roman numeral carved above the very short door.

After we finished our tour of the dungeon area, we exited the palace via the "Bridge of Sighs".  Unfortunately, the views from this beautiful bridge inside the palace (over a small canal facing the lagoon) are not worthy of sighs right now-- there is extensive renovation, and it's all covered in blue plastic--darn!

A quick trip back to our apartment for a shoe change, and we are off to explore another area of Venice--this time Piazza Santa Margeurita.  It's a lovely area--not quite so many tourists.  We found a small cafe and had our last lunch in Venice, a shared pizza and beer.  Then we just set out walking, turning down a narrow street or crossing a bridge when it looked interesting.  At one point, we both mentioned that it looked like we were on a campus--and we were!  We kept wandering, not having any destination in mind, but really enjoying this very quiet and authentic part of Venice.

We knew we had been walking for a ways, but were very surprised to look up and see cruise ships--we had walked all the way to the cruise terminal!  Luckily, we easily found a vaporetto stop, and with the help of a nice young Venetian woman, figured out which one was going close to our apartment.

We got off a couple of stops before our usual one, and thought we'd wander along and find another one of those bruschetta "thingys" for dinner tonight.

 Well, we never did find the bruschetta, but we happened upon a lovely small church, so decided to take a look inside.  They were playing some beautiful music which sounded familiar......It was the parish of Antonio Vivaldi.  He had been baptized here, and this was his boyhood parish.  Quite a find on our way home!

We did make a quick stop for a gelato, this time we shared a scoop of dark, bittersweet chocolate--the best yet:

We looked and looked, but couldn't find another of those yummy bruschetta thingys.   We did find this incredible cheese shop though, and thought of our friend Pat E, wishing she could be there to enjoy some cheese!  Just look at these beautiful wheels of cheese:

After a dinner of a very good spinach/ricotta tart and more of those delicious salad greens, our last evening was spent packing and spiffing up the apartment a bit.  We'll be turning over the keys at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and then we'll have our last lovely vaporetto ride down the Grande Canal to the Santa Lucia train station.  It's been a wonderful week in Venice.

Fabulous Florence, here we come!