Pisa, Italy

Pisa was my favorite city, I think! (There's too many to choose from!)  Pisa is more of the quaint little town where as the other places we went were either totally touristy (Rome) or just too many people (Naples).  We also relaxed a bit more in Pisa since we had just traveled for like 26 hours the day before.  We did have Venice in our plans, but after the lost luggage thing - we decided to cut it out for next time (yes there will be a next, and a next...)

Our hotel was awesome!  It went down hill from here which eased me into the more dirty and weird hotels.  One blessing was just that they gave us slippers, I know that sounds silly, but mine were in Paris and I don't do very well w/out something on my feet in strange places.  And the breakfast also was the best with real pastries, eggs and meat, cereal, fruit, cheese and cookies for later.  Just that made it good.  The first day out (Dec 24th) we took a train to Cinque Terra - the 5 cities along the coast built on 5 different points.  It was so amazing to get out to one point and be able to see a few other cities way up or down the coast!  And the houses were all colorful and built on top of each other - it looked like each was competing to make sure they had ocean view, a place to park their boat, and easy access to the water.

Between the first and second city they have a very easy walk along the mountain wall called the Walk of Love. (below) We planned to go do that, but because of the rain there were possible slides so we just caught the train to the next city instead.  The next city we spent the most time just walking along the mountain for what we could, checking out the houses and just poking around at fun sites.  It really is a different world - I didn't see one car or really anyone out (it was Christmas Eve I guess) but they're all just small towns where everyone just seems to do their own thing, I'd think of a retirement community but a fun one that takes their small boats out and tourists come to swim in the water...

We made it back to Pisa before dinner and had David's famous kebab.  Let me tell you, I didn't know what a kebab was according to Italy.  The Pakastanians or others came to Italy and they roast a huge meat on a stick and when you order some they stick it in the fire while it cooks in like one minute and then they take this shaver to shave off the meat into a tortilla with crazy stuff (fries, salad, rice, cooked salad, etc) or just to eat with the other stuff on the side.  I liked it w/out the fries...  David was raving about this and I just assumed he was having a shiskebab or something very small.  Oh me.

That evening we took a bus - not sure how we survived the buses - they are known to be the best drivers, David says, and I agree, but a bit scary!  We took the bus to the leaning tower and then walked home through the city and over the little river.  It was just a cute little town.

Christmas we woke up, had delicious breakfast, and then headed out to the leaning tower to get a look at it in the day along with the Baptistry and Church next to it.  The leaning tower really wasn't as big as I've imagined or seen on TV, but it really does lean, and actually kind of bows out since they tried to correct it.  Did you know that the ground is actually frozen - that was their way to solve the sinking side! - so it will always be like that - I'm amazed they wanted to keep it rather than just build it up again!

That afternoon we took the 4 hour train back to Rome to have Christmas night there... still without our baggages.  We called Paris a few times and they could mostly just tell us that our bags were somewhere but since the airport had been closed they were more worried about getting the people stranded places.  Well, on to Rome... :)