and then we went to... Pisa!

Ciao!  Come state??  I hope this finds you all happy & well!  I'm just wrapping up the amazing and fabulous Tuscany adventure that Elysia & I took while she was here.  This is the last of it, a day trip from Florence to Pisa!  We had debated about going, hearing that there is not too much happening in Pisa but... come on!  Who doesn't want to see the ever mystical LEANING TOWER OF PISA once in their lifetime?  Why is it so cool?  Why is it something that you learn about in school when you are a child & it sticks in your head so that you feel magnetically compelled to see it when you are 34?  We heard it was one of the BIG 3 in Italy so, we had to go!  (the colliseum, the canals of Venice & the leaning tower).  

It turns out that Pisa is a nice little town/city.  There is a university there & I've heard it is a pretty sweet scene.  The students were on holiday while we were there.  The mother of the child I teach English to teaches @ Pisa University, something like spanish literature.  Pisa is @ the mouth of the Arno River on the Tyrrhenian sea about a 1.2h train trip from Flo-town.  

pastries galore!  i was able to find some of the delicious panforte here.

Here it is!  The leaning tower of Pisa.  The tower, along with a cathedral, a baptistry & a graveyard are all grouped together on a lovely, lush, green lawn.  It is unique because you don't see many (any?) lawns in Italy.  And often monuments, churches, etc. are all packed in, close quarters in the middle of cramped city blocks.  This are is called The piazza dei Miracoli & here these nice white marble structures seem to float on a sea of green lawn.

ha ha, holding up the tower.  this is the typical tourist pose.  

here you see the baptistry building in the back, it is also doing a bit of a lean.  the baptistry is designed to be perfectly resonant & echoey & if you sing in there it sounds wonderfully heavenly & angelic.  the guard employee does a singing demo every half hour!

ancient city walls, nice green lawn

whoa!  is it my camera angle or is the thing tipping before our very eyes?

The tower is leaning due to a weak & unstable subsoil.  After it was built, the weight of thing caused the ground to settle.  It was built in stages, some of the upper layers are actually built with one side taller than the other to compensate for the leaning.  If you look real close you can see that the thing is actually sort of curved.  Here is another important sight....  stacked heel brown patent tennis shoes with brown tights!

 There is also a cemetery called the camposanto on site.  It was really peaceful & pretty.

I love this one!

 Just a side note here.  I am always raving about these white marble sculptures, I just love them, right?  My sister tells me that back in the old days, those Romans used to paint the marble sculptures bright colors.  Something perhaps, like this:

Or even, ugh, this!  I guess I am just too used to seeing them purely white.  I have really grown to love them this way.  The colors look garish & tacky compared to the nice, clean, classic white.  Interesting, don't you think?

it looks foul, doesn't it?

However, the sculptures done later, like in the Renaissance (David, etc) were meant to be just white.  Good!

haha, the people on the right are doing the classic, hold the tower up pantomime :)

and here we are doing the classic hamming it up with the long arm photos :)

 We really enjoyed Pisa!  On the job front...  things continue to not go real well.  My Italian business manager is a bit volatile & it is stressful.  I'm still waiting on getting my official full time work visa to stay.  What I have now just okays me to work 20h per week.  (which I haven't been working) (which is why I've had the time to read about ten books lately).  So, I am informed today that in a "couple weeks" I'm going to have an oral test & reading test of my Italian ability to see if I am able to communicate effectively enough to act as a doctor here.  I think I can & my Italian is decent at this point but...  this was never part of the plan!  What if the test is too hard & I fail?  I've been told to study real hard over the next couple weeks.  Needless to say, stress levels continue to be high.  Sometimes I wonder how I ended up in this situation?  Apparently I needed to go through some personal trials at this time in my life.  Does life ever get easier?  If it did, would it then be boring?

Wish me luck my friends!
xx

so pretty!