Sunday, February 10, 2008

Pisa and Lucca

We truly enjoyed Rome, but now it was time to head out and see the rest of Northern Italy.  Our first stop was Pisa, famous for it's leaning tower.  It was quite impressive to see that this tower, which is leaning quite far, is still standing, and has been standing as long as it has.

IMGP1017 IMGP1020 Look at those goofy tourists!  It was actually funny to see so many people all along this walkway posing the same way!  As crooked as the tower looks here, you can really see how "off" it is when you get up close.

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After getting our look at the tower, we had some free time to do some shopping and have lunch.  We found this neat little shop where they sold Pinocchio puppets.  The man who wrote Pinocchio was originally from Pisa.  Anyway, we found a nice puppet for Dylan and a book to go along with it.  Hope he enjoys it.

We found a little restaurant and decided to have some pizza (in Pisa, what else do you have?).  Didn't turn out so well.  Actually my pizza was actually quite good.  The restaurant was on a side street away from the tower.

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I ordered the "Salami Picante", which we in the States know as "pepperoni".  My pizza was good.  Melissa ordered an olive pizza and got a cheese pizza with a few whole olives on top.  Cindy ordered the "Popeye" pizza, and got a cheese pizza with what looked like a couple of handfuls of spinach thrown on the top.  Ha Ha, I liked mine!

After lunch we were off to Lucca where we were going to spend the night.  Lucca was the very cute little medieval town.  We walked through the gates in the wall surrounding the city, and then into the town itself.

IMGP1044 IMGP1048 As you can see, it was very quaint.  At one time the city had an old Roman arena.  That has now been turned into a town "square", but as you can see, it is actually round.

IMGP1052 We spent some time looking around the city, and found a church's tower that we were able to go up inside and see a better view of the entire city.

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IMGP1091 IMGP1094 Lucca had some stores that both Cindy and I found quite attractive.  For myself, of course, I liked the cheese shops.  I'm a cheese freak so it was cool to see so many different cheeses together. Cindy liked the pastry shop.

IMGP1109 IMGP1116 It was a fun day, with quite a bit more traveling than sight-seeing, but we had a great time just the same.

1 comment:

Jodi said...

I love all your picures it looks like alot of fun. Thank you Aunt Cindy, you were actually one of the strong women I had in mind while writing that. I know I am a wuss a big one but it feels like its getting better the last couple have improved. But it does come and go. Today is great... and hopefully tomorrow.. Thank you, Love you all. Have a great time..