Tuscan Adventure, Part I: Pisa

Needless to say, we had a long day that day and we were dead tired that night. We had spent the night at Fattoria Lischeto, an agriturismo outside Volterra.


Oh, one of the highlights of the trip for Stef: a real Chianina bistecca florentina for dinner. He deserved it, for all the driving he had to do that day.


The next morning for breakfast, we had fresh milk and cheese. I had fresh ricotta drizzled with honey. It was soooo good. I never had ricotta like that before. This was a real working farm in the middle of farmlands.


Did you know they made Lamborghini tractors? I found out before the fancy sports cars, Lamborghini started out making farm tractors.


The view of the hill town of Volterra in the distance.


We set off after breakfast for Pisa. Yes, I knew it was probably going to be cheesy but I wanted to see the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. On the way, we saw cows grazing in the countryside.


And the fields of brightly colored sunflowers in Tuscany really do exist!


They look so bright and cheerful all along the highway.


And in a short time we arrived at Pisa's Piazza del Duomo. My initial reaction was, wow, the torre is huge. It looks so much bigger in real life compared to in pictures. If you look compare how small the people look in contrast to the tower, you can get some sense of the size of the tower. And of course, I couldn't miss the fact that it really was tilted to one side. It's just pretty amazing how it hasn't fallen over in all this time.


If you look closely, the baptistery is not exactly standing up perfectly straight either.


We pulled out our sandwiches that we bought at a supermarket deli counter for a small picnic lunch.


Then we joined the crowds of tourists snapping pictures of each other while doing all sorts of silly poses with the tower in the background.


I had to really cajole Stef into doing this one.


My turn. ;-)


So corny but fun. haha.