21 March 2008

Post #47:  Pisa

Today, I stood next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa! Do you know that when I taught about Europe to my sixth graders all those years, and I looked at that photo of the Leaning Tower in our social studies textbook, I never once imagined I’d ever stand next to it. Well, maybe once I had a passing thought: Wouldn’t it be cool to go see that someday? But I don’t believe I held out a lot of hope that I’d see it with my own eyes. I wanted to touch it with my own hands, too. But we didn’t bother to pay for entrance, and I thought the guard at the gate might not take kindly to my jumping over the fence to slap it five. I imagined I’d spend the rest of the day in jail, so I decided to slap the nearby Duomo five instead.

We began our day in Forte di Marmi, with the hotel breakfast, followed by a drive along the sea. We stopped just long enough to listen to the crashing surf, and to pick up a few stones and shells for the kids. The shoreline here is continuous cabanas and marinas, so that you cannot see the water from the highway, except for little glances down an occasional lane that goes straight through. We parked near one of these paths, and walked to the shore, with a sleepy Bobby. It was windy, so we didn’t stay long.

We drove to Pisa, stopped in a grocery for some luncheon goods, and then found a parking spot near the historical sites, and sat and ate our lunch in the car. It was windy, and cool, so we wanted to get as close as we could to the tower. Since we’ve been spending a lot of euros, we decided to make it a cheap lunch. I found some bruschetta, about the size of a Rocky Roccoco Pizza slice, for 1.30 euro, so I grabbed two of those, Dave grabbed a six-pack of diet Cokes, and some apples and bananas, and we were good to go, for under 6 euros! With four diet Cokes left over!

After walking the grounds, snapping many photos, and touring briskly past the gift kiosks, we hustled back out of the wind, and began our quick-tour of Tuscany.  The weather began to turn on this day, so we drove directly to Siena instead of taking an excursion to the historical town of San Gimignano.  We'd been told that was a place to see, but we were both tired, and ready for a more relaxing evening.  We decided a quiet night in the hotel, with some time to watch NCAA basketball, and early to bed, would be a better plan.  It would have been no fun wandering in the misty cold with a baby anyway. 

We arrived in Siena early enough, around 5:30, but finding our hotel wasn't as straight-forward as we'd guessed.  We expected Siena to be so small there would be only one Best Western, but it turned out there were three, and we chose the wrong sign to follow. Since we'd driven around quite awhile, the hope for a relaxing night was looking a bit grim.

The internet site, where we made our booking, said that there would be free WIFI in our rooms, and Dave specifically searched for this with the hope that we'd be able to relax and enjoy the NCAA basketball games this evening. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The internet connection came at a hefty cost of 10 euros per hour! After Dave showed the woman behind the counter the web page, and its false promises, she offered him the solace of one free hour of internet use. Needless to say, he was not a happy man.

While we were in the lobby, trying to decide whether to stay, or consider seeking a place that stands behind it's online promises, an alarm kept going off behind the desk, and the very frazzled desk clerk called someone for help, then she paged a cleaning woman, and asked her to stop "doing whatever you are doing" and come press a set of buttons to shut the alarm off every few moments when it started up again.  Then she was back on the phone, calling for assistance, while we waited to square things away. 

Meanwhile, a young couple, I'd guess early 30's, came in to get a room.  I noticed the young man, who reminded me of my baby brother, had a port in his neck, I assume for chemotherapy.  We were next to the hospital, so this made sense.  I immediately felt for this young man.  Not sure if the gal with him was girlfriend or sister.  My heart sure went out to them. 

The cleaning woman was so sweet and cute.  She had immediately started talking with Bobby when she first walked up, and we became fast friends, exchanging smiles from across the room, when she stood there dutifully punching the buttons to stop the annoying siren.  She was much calmer than the gal behind the desk, and she kept saying, "Don't worry.  Okay.  It's okay."  To the poor, stressed-out desk clerk.  We finally decided we'd stay, regardless of our disappointment, and went to our room.

The free internet hour gave us time to check email, call the kids and Nichole and see how they were doing, upload some photos for the blog, and that was about it. We would have to do our internet search for accomodations for Saturday night from somewhere else in the morning.  I didn’t have time to be more selective with the Como-Bellagio photos, so you get a lot of images to help you feel as though you took the drive with us.

The good news, we made it to bed rather early for a change, having been too disenchanted to even bother to go find some dinner, we had bread and cheese instead in the room as we watched CNN, the only English speaking channel available.

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