Day 8 already! We spent today in the stunningly, jaw-droppingly gorgeous Piaza Del Duomo in Piza. This is the walled medieval cathedral area that includes the Leaning Tower of Piza, the Cathedral of Piza, the “Battistero” or Baptismal of San Giovani, as well as a museum and the cemetery. We took our time and took a couple of hundred photos of the site. Every time we turned a corner and found ourselves looking at the Tower again we were struck by HOW MUCH it LEANS!!! So of course, like every single last other tourist in there, I stopped to help hold it up…

Thank God for tourists holding this thing up!

So of course we took the tour to climb to the top of the tower. When you first walk into the base of it I swear you have a hard time keeping your balance. The marble floor is profoundly out of level and you have to consciously work to keep yourself standing upright. They have a plumb bob suspended from a central point high up in the tower with the weight hanging to the lowest level. The bob is nearly touching the lowest wall, to show you how out of true the Tower is. We were just amazed that the thing remained upright. Directly in the path of the tower’s slow fall is a large building that may someday become rubble under a falling pile of beautiful marble. Anyway, we climbed the circular stairs to the tippy top. As you circle the tower your center of gravity easily tells you which side of the thing you are on. When we got to the top, this was our view…

View from the top of Tower Del Leanio.

I should mention a word about “selfies” here. Everywhere you go you are accosted by immigrants trying to sell you “selfie sticks.” This is apparently the newest rage, and practically everyone has one. This is a handheld device of varying lengths that you attach your phone to so you can hold it at a distance and press a button to take a selfie. Everyone from middle-aged Chinese women to young Italian dudes has one, and as you listen to the foreign language babble around you you can occasionally pick out the word, “Selfie,” which I find hilarious. But it turns out that my new husband’s arm is quite sufficient, and he’s figured out the correct angle. We don’t need no stinkin’ Selfie Stick!

The view from the tower was gorgeous, but I SWEAR I felt the thing move, and so I was a little grateful to get my feet back on solid ground. The entire site was beautiful beyond belief. With pictures we could only begin to capture the essence of it. Here’s one that gives you a bit of an idea of the beauty of this site.

Baptismal, Cathedral and Tower of Piza

After the Tower, our ticket let us into the Cathedral. The words “breathtaking,” “stunning” “gorgeous” and “indescribably beautiful” don’t even begin to scratch the surface here. Here are several photos to give you a glimpse…

Cathedral Inside

More Cathedral

And more…

And more…

By this time we were hungry, and so we stopped at a local food vendor for our lunch and requisite daily photo of Lorinda Eating Lunch with a Castle in the Background (actually, the ancient walls surrounding the site)…

Requisite Castle in the Background

And then we went back in to see the cemetery building filled with sarcophagi both in the floors and along the walls….

Cemetery outside

One of the sarcophagi

And the Baptistry, an entire building devoted to the rite of baptism…

Battistero

After one final stop at the ruins of a Roman Bath…

Roman bath ruins

We headed back to our car and off to Florence or “Firenze” Italy. (We haven’t figured out why the rest of the world insists on calling these cities by names that the Italians don’t actually use). The drive to Florence was scenic but uneventful. The drive within Florence to find a hotel room is one that we’re pretty sure will net us at least one traffic violation likely to show up in the mail. You see, they have roads that aren’t wide enough for a couple of donkeys, but they merrily take their cars down them to compete with the foot traffic. Then there are other narrow city streets that are closed to everything but authorized vehicles. Perhaps we should have studied the traffic signs just a little more, and it would have been nice if the lady in Gary’s phone had been aware that no, those streets are meant for walking, not driving. In any case, we found ourselves several times at the end of a narrow one-way street with no place to go but down a pedestrian only area. We had to give up on our first hotel choice because it was literally unreachable by car. Our second hotel choice was reachable, and we landed a protected parking place, but our hotel room is actually in an attic.

Our attic room

It’s actually the biggest room we’ve seen so far, and will comfortably sleep 4. The bathroom is recessed down several marble steps that we hope we won’t kill ourselves on tonight, and it’s hot and stuffy up here, but at least we’ve got a place to roost for the night.

Our treacherous bathroom

The end for tonight!