Lucca - Day 17

I thought this coffee machine in our hotel was pretty awesome.  I'd never seen one where you could see the milk bottles and watch the milk level go down.

This package was sitting by the pancakes, so Tim grabbed it thinking it was some type of jam.  Do you know what it really is?  A hint - he didn't use it on his pancakes!

Tim and Mary Beth's daughter, Elizabeth, met us in Pisa today, then we all traveled to Luca, where Mary Beth and Elizabeth will stay next week and go to an art class.  This is one of the gates into the walled city of Luca.

I don't know if you can see the spikes at the end of the gate, but there are some spikes that would go into the ground when the gate is lowered.

We had read (in Rick Steves book, of course) that you could rent bikes and ride around the wall of the city, so that's what we did.  It was a nice ride and was a lot easier on my foot than walking.

This tower with the trees growing on it is one of the things to see in Luca.

This is the field on the other side of the wall of the city

Another tower...

...and another view of the wall.

Another striped church.

The four of us with the trees growing on the tower in the background.

Looking straight up at the tower.

The plaza of Luca.

Enjoying a cup of coffee or in my case, a cup of "warm" chocolate.  That's how it was described on the menu and it was just barely warm, but it had a lot of whipped cream on the top, so maybe that's why it wasn't very hot.

After having our drinks, Tim, Ken and I took the train back to Pisa.  Ken and I flew to Paris, France to spend the night, while Tim stayed overnight in Pisa and left early the next morning.  When we checked our luggage, the woman checking us in, was going to send our bags directly to Seattle, but we told her we needed our bags for our overnight in Paris.  She had to redo everything to do that, but we thought everything was going to show up in Paris.  When we went to get our bags in Paris, mine came up, but Ken's didn't!  We spent about an hour in an office with a couple of women, trying to figure out what happened to Ken's bag.  The first one we worked with was pretty sure that the bag wasn't in Paris, but Ken kept insisting that it had to be there and that he had to have his bag for the night.  Eventually, the other woman got involved, made a couple of calls, and found his suitcase.  It was a total miracle that they found his suitcase and that they brought it up to him.  They even made sure that there was a shuttle bus available to take us to where we needed to go to get to our hotel, because the shuttle buses were about to stop running since it was almost 11:30 by this time.  They went above and beyond the call of duty to help us!  One other crazy thing happened after we got home, the next day, Tuesday, I lost a crown from one of my teeth.  I was so glad that I didn't lose it while we were gone and that I was able to get into the dentist the next day!

Cinque Terra - Day 16, Part 2

The second town that we visited was Vernazza.  Ken, Kari and I stayed in Vernazza when we visited Italy 16 years ago. so it was fun to go back and see it again.  It hadn't changed much, other than the number of people that were visiting it on Saturday.  Groups lead by tour guides were in all the cities, which wasn't the case 16 years ago.

Fishing boats in Vernazza.

Another shot of Vernazza.

This is Monterosso al Mare, the first town we went to, seen from Vernazza.

Ken and I climbed up behind the city to take a picture from up on the hill.  You can see a boat coming in to the dock on the right hand side of the picture.  As we watched the boat unload its passengers, a big wave came and got the last passenger  getting off wet.  You could hear the screams and see her start running from where we were standing.  Climbing up to this spot, then back down, caused my foot to flare up again for a couple of days.

Anyone for some fried sardines and fries?

This was the last town we visited and we didn't think it was as nice or interesting of a town as the other two.  It was uphill all the way from the train station and didn't have many shops, so we didn't stay very long there.

A display case of fresh pasta.

Cinque Terra - Day 16, Part 1

 This is a view of one of the 5 towns of the Cinque Terra area, that I took from the train.  All of the little towns are built on the rocks next to the Mediterranean Sea.  We rode the train to the 5th town, then made our way back.  We had time to go to only 3 of the 5 towns.  It was a sunny day when we left Pisa, Tim wore shorts and didn't take a jacket, I took a jacket, but I also put on some suntan lotion, thinking it was going to be a warm, sunny day and didn't bring an umbrella.  Mary Beth was the only one that was prepared for any type of weather, she had a jacket and an umbrella, both of which ended up being needed.

 The first town that we went to was Monterosso al Mare, with not much activity on the beach.

 A narrow street...

 ...and the narrow aisle inside of a store.  This is the whole store.

 Mary Beth found some goodies to buy in this little store.

 Ken read on the internet that there was going to be a lemon festival going on in Monterosso al Mare, the day we were there, and we were excited to see how they would be celebrating it.  We started looking for evidence of it and found this wheelbarrow of lemons.  This was the first thing we saw and were beginning to wonder why we weren't seeing more evidence of the festival.  Later we saw a poster advertising the festival and the date had been scratched out and changed to the following weekend, which explained why we weren't seeing anything going on!

 We thought this striped church was interesting.  It was the first striped church that I think we saw, but after we saw it, we noticed some other striped churches.

 The inside was striped also.

I really liked the way they painted this building.

Disembarking and Pisa - Day 15, Part 2

 The Leaning Tower is still leaning!

 An angel statue by the Domo Cathedral.

This is the Domo Cathedral and the Baptistry  is behind it, both are in a plaza that also includes the Leaning Tower, and the plaza is called Miracle Plaza or Field of Miracles.  Somehow, I managed to make the Baptistry look like it's leaning also, but it really isn't.  I'm not sure what I did.

 Tim and Mary Beth climbed to the top of the Leaning Tower, While Ken and I stayed at ground level to save my foot that many steps.

 We spent our time watching people taking pictures of someone with their hand positioned so that it would look like they were holding up the Leaning Tower.  There's 4 people doing it in just this picture.  It was funny watching everyone trying to take the same picture.

 I liked this face on one of the pillars of the Leaning Tower.

 This is the pulpit in the Domo Cathedral.

 The front of the cathedral with a mosaic of Jesus on the ceiling.

 I loved this wood carved/painted altar in the cathedral.

This is the setting for that altar.  It's one of many little niches in the cathedral.

 The Baptistry is famous for its echo.  Just after we went in, there was a demonstration of the echoing of the building by a lady.  She would sing a note, then sing another, and another, which resulted in us hearing her sing a trio with herself because of the echo.

 The entrance and other side of the Domo Cathedral.

 This is a cemetery next to the cathedral called Campo Santo.

One of the grave markers in the cemetery.

Disembarking & Pisa - Day 15, Part 1

We are home now and are trying to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime, (maybe 8 or 9pm, if we push it).  I have 3 more days of blogs that I didn't get done while I was on our trip, so I'll finish those now that we're home again.

As we got ready to get off the ship, I realized that I hadn't taken very many pictures on board the ship.  I wanted to at least get a picture of the tree growing in the middle of the ship, with its fake metal root system.

We didn't see this statue at the port when we left, but we arrived by van then, and the driver must have taken us a different way to get to the ship.  As we left the port, we walked to the train station, and saw this on our way.  We wondered why this statue was in Italy instead of in New York City, where the picture of the real couple was taken!  After all of the really old statues we'd seen, it was fun to see something more recent and lighthearted.

Waiting at the train station with another couple from Canada that we had met.

Here comes the train!

Sitting in our compartment on the train, on our way to Pisa.

The river and some houses in Pisa.  We didn't have any rain today!

Gelato became our afternoon snack.  Luckily for us, gelato stores are all over the place in the cities we visited.

We arrived in Pisa, with no problems.  I was finally feeling better, so off we went to explore the city.  We were walking from our hotel to the main plaza where the Leaning Tower is, but saw some interesting things on the way.  This church had a bell and a clock on it, plus if you look closely, you can see some painting on the wall.

 Before we left, someone told me that I should buy some shoes in Italy.  I knew I wouldn't do that, but I did notice the shoes in the stores and on the feet of some of the Italian young women.

  I couldn't get a good picture of someone wearing shoes like these, so I settled for taking a picture of a couple of pairs that were for sale.  I can't imagine wearing something like this, but they looked good on the women we saw wearing them!

Our hotel in Pisa had this picture on the wall above the bed, which we thought was a funny picture to have in a hotel room.