First Day Trip (Part Two): PISA!!

Buon Giorno Blog Buddies,

I thought the McDonald's sign with the leaning tower of Pisa was hilarious! Of course they are going to sideline next to one of the world's most famous structures, and I was very tempted to get that Big Mac (but I resisted). The bus to Pisa was much less enjoyable than to Lucca, as we did a bunch of roundabouts in order to get back onto the right freeway. And the inside of the bus cabin, reminded me of the inside of a plane, so I was feeling a little queasy. It didn't help that Italian drivers accelerate into roundabouts, and brake hard to allow a few vespas ahead of them.

I noticed nearly every city has a toll booth going into and when you exit, making personal car trips an expensive venture. Not to mention gas runs about $7.89 a gallon? They compute it into liters here, so its a bit tricky to figure it out.

Any ways! Pisa was full of anticipation because everyone wanted to grab a cliche photo of holding it up. (Which I did take, but as you all know about now, that I travelled thousands of miles, only to have a cell phone camera. Which I guess in the grand scheme of things is silly, but I think it has taken rather fine photos.... Any ways, my friends all took my picture with their cameras, and none of them have uploaded it Facebook or sent it to me yet. Not sure why I needed all this in parentheses, but there you go.)

This is the first thing you see, when walking into the Piazza







The closest building is the Baptistery, where to this day, babies are still
 baptized into the Catholic Church.
The second building being the Il Duomo, the main church of Pisa,
and the third building: The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The Baptistery:



Il Duomo:

And finally:

The tour guide told us a cool way of looking at the buildings, plus the nearby graveyard. Babies are born and baptized through the first building. Worship and live their lives through the Duomo (church), then come to rest inside of the graveyard. And they are all in very close proximity together. The graveyard was just over a fence, but we didn't pay to see it. :(

Random fountain, just outside the Leaning Tower

Huge Marble steps leading up to the Duomo building

Random shot, before going INTO the church building. :D

The interior of the church was extremely beautiful and this is where the cell phone shots get a little grimy, and do not really show the true glory of what is inside.

Pisa was one of my favorite places, Lucca being my first outside of Florence. I have a third part of this day trip which has some videos (SHORT snippets of two cool areas in both Pisa and Lucca).

Best wishes to my sister who is currently in Oakland donating bone marrow and saving a woman's life right now. Love you Alicia. :)