Leaning Tower of Pisa

Off the ship early to make our way to the town of Pisa in Italy, home of the famous leaning tower. In our coach, we traveled along the Via Aurelia, an old Roman road leading from the harbor into the town of Pisa. The tower is found among three other less-famous structures...the Duomo, Baptistry and Campo Santo, together called the Campo dei Miracoli (Plaza of Miracles). The big showcase is, though, the tower.

Chris contributes to keeping the Tower upright

 

You can actually go up in this thing, but there is no way Pop is going up that high, especially in a building that (though it hasn't done so in several hundred years) looks as though it may topple at any moment. Still, people paid 17 Euros (about 22 dollars) for the privilege of climbing up to the top of the tower..I would suspect just to say that they'd done it. LOTS of tourists, all providing the illusions of bracing the tower from falling (as Chris does).

C & R examine a model of the Campo dei Miracoli

We found their museums a bit hard to understand, not just because all the narratives were in Italian..and to be fair, they have the English translation there, too. But the displays seemed a little less organized than we were used to. Artifacts seemed to be in no particular order. Chris read about these two 15th Century king and queen outfits that were just out in the middle of a display room with no connection to anything around them! A good sport, Ruslan took the other costume. We thought it would make a fun picture. There was in the museum, though, a very interesting video about what they've done over the years to prevent the tower from further leaning. So far, so good!

Royalty from the Middle Ages

 

The gorgeous cathedral allowed visitors, so we started in. After being reminded that we needed to remove any hats and (ladies) put a shawl on bare shoulders, we got a chance to experience this beautiful 15th Century building. Chris and Ruslan were surprised by the large, imposing and ornate lectern platform reserved for the priest to speak to those attending the mass.

 

The baptistry (a separate building, which we did not enter) seemed exceptionally large for the administration of this ordinance in the Catholic Church. We're not sure what (other than a font of some kind) is actually in that building.

The Baptistry

 

Looks straight, eh? Only from this angle.

 

Looks straight, eh? Only from this angle.

We then traveled through the Tuscan countryside on our way to Florence. You can see the olive orchards around the estates. We passed vast fields of sunflowers on the way, too. The Italians living here use much of the first pressing of the olive oil for themselves and export the sunflower oil.

Looks straight, eh? Only from this angle.

 

Olive tree orchards in the Tuscan countryside

 

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