Our first stop in Italy was Pisa and of course, you can’t visit Pisa without climbing to the top of its Leaning Tower! After putting our bags in the free lockers a short distance away we lined up for our timed-entry. It wasn’t as tiring as I thought it would be to climb the 269 steps. Perhaps all the walking we had done in Ireland helped me prepare for it. In the videos, Marissa demonstrates a couple of different ways to walk down the steps. (I’m not sure what she was doing in the second video, but I thought it was funny, so I included it.) It was interesting to see the counter weights hanging on the inside and their system for measuring the lean of the tower. I’m guessing someone is in charge of making sure it doesn’t start leaning too much again!
With just a short walk within the plaza, we visited the Baptistry of San Giovanni next. We happened to be sitting in the upper level resting when a guy started a vocal demonstration of its cool acoustics. Randy caught a bit of it on video, shown below. That’d be a fun job to have, ha.
From there, we walked back across the plaza to the Cathedral.
Then we wandered around the Camposanto Monumentale, admiring the huge frescoes.
And our last stop before leaving the plaza was the Museum of Sinopias.
Marissa was in charge of planning our itinerary in Pisa, and so far so good! She had us walk about 10 minutes for sandwiches at I Porci Comodi. The had some interesting combinations of meat that were probably normal for Italy, but a bit strange for us. A good experience, though.
After lunch, we walked almost 20 minutes to the Giardino Scotto Park. We all found a shady spot on the grass to escape the mid-day heat and relax for a while. I actually dozed off for a few minutes and regained a bit of energy to finish the long day!
Marissa scheduled a Pasta Making Class this evening and was told to meet our shuttle at the Baths of Nero. Her reasoning was that “If you’re ever going to learn to make homemade Pasta, Italy is the place you should learn!” The walk to there was close to our hotel, so we popped in for a potty break and to freshen up, then walked 20 minutes to the pickup spot.
We all really enjoyed the “pasta making” evening at Giocomo & Helena’s home. Around 6pm, Helena served us a sampling of local bread, olives, cheeses, pesto and fruit. I was full before we ever got started with the pasta! But turns out that was good, because it was around 8pm before we sat down to eat dinner (which is typical, evidently, for Italy). While we waited for the pasta to dry enough to cook, Giocomo walked us around their property to see the chickens and olive trees. We looked for their donkey, but it was no where to be found.
Other sights while walking around…
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