Leaving Florence, we made our way to the coast to see the famed Leaning Tower of Pisa. In some ways, I feel bad for the people who live in the town of Pisa, as the cathedral, baptistery, and tower are the only points of interest in this town, and occupy an area about the size of a city block. I’m sure the day in day out parade of touring buses, cruise ship excursions, and tourists in general, wear on a local resident’s nerves. I guess it’s fortunate that most of the city exists south of the tourist area, so they may not even notice unless they try to get to the highway on the north side.

That said, our trip to Pisa was something I will do only once in my life, unless I go back to Italy with someone who’s never been. In my mind, the leaning tower of Pisa is one of the oldest tourist traps in the world. While it is very famous, I learned later that day that it is by no means the only leaning tower in Italy. In fact, on our way to Venice, and even in Venice I viewed many leaning towers. How this one came to prominence is anyone’s guess. I will admit that of all the leaning towers I saw today, this was by far the prettiest.

But we saw it.  We posed for the obligatory pictures of us holding it up, along with the hundreds of other tourists from all over the world. There is only one restroom on the property and you pay a euro to use it. We could have paid extra to go up the tower and into the buildings, but we only had an hour at the site, so it didn’t seem worth it. Instead we spent some time among the sidewalk vendors as I looked for a leather bag like Maurizio’s, that I could call my “man bag” or “murse.”  There were some authentic leather bags for a hundred euros, and there was the one I got for 25 euros. I do try to be frugal.

We left Pisa and headed east toward Venice. Before leaving Tuscany, we stopped at another Gate 1 partnership that happened to be a winery and olive oil press. After Pamela led us on a tour of the vineyard and the old olive oil pressing room, we were served a fantastic lunch and treated to a wine tasting of their signature labels. At the end of the meal we aided our digestion with a shot of Grappa. It tasted like kerosene and burned the entire way down. This was quickly followed by a nice Lemoncello to end the meal. Most of our tour consumed quite a bit of wine and spirits during the meal and were ready for the bus ride.  I suppose, knowing that the remainder of the ride would be three hours, the planners of the tour wanted to make sure the passengers were happy, if not a little sleepy, travelers.

We stopped at a service plaza outside Bologna for a restroom and snack break. Janet and I took advantage of the cappuccino bar you find in many of these stops. It’s kind of a like a mini Starbucks, but not.  You pay at the register, and then take your ticket to the barista who prepares your beverage. Drinks are served in ceramic ware and standing tables give you a place to consume your beverage. Unlike France where drinking coffee might last hours, these stops prefer you to enjoy your coffee quickly and leave. We did just that and got back on the bus to Venice.

After crossing the Appenine Mountain range that forms a spine through the peninsula of Italy, the land became much flatter than the regions of Umbria and Tuscany. There were still villages, scattered across the country side, but the architecture of the towers had changed from being topped with square fortress-like crowns to pyramids.  This change was a reflection of how close we were getting to Venice, and the influence of Venetian architecture.

We arrived in Venice in the late afternoon and said adio to our driver. Only a few residents are allowed to drive in Venice, so porters unloaded our bus and transported our luggage via boat to our hotel. From the dock, we took a short tram to one of the four bridges that cross the Grand Canal , Ponte della Constituzione.  Ascending this modern bridge we were able to get our first glimpses of the city of islands. Though we’d seen many spectacular sites this week, Venice seemed like a city you could only find in your imagination.

Our experiences in Venice lasted from Thursday evening to Saturday morning, but I’ll save that for my next post.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller