Veo muchas edificios en la dia. En la Ciudad de Piza yo veo: la "Leaning Tower of Piza", la Catedral de Piza, y la Baptiseri de Piza. Yo no se se llama de la catedral de Piza, para muchas turisticas es no problema porque es no importante pero para mi es important yo se se llama de mas edificios yo veo.
The man at the desk was quite happy to see us the next morning, asking us where we were going and what we were up to immediately after we got done with our breakfast (which was the same as usual except for the people within the room). He didn't seem so happy knowing that we were heading all the way down to Piza by car. He was very very happy to hear that we were going to Carrara, talking to us about it for a couple minutes at length before letting us head out the door. Quite a wonderful man really.
On the road I didn't have anything to work on. I got to look out the window as much as I wanted as we passed through tunnel after tunnel and went through valleys with hilltowns and looming mountains on both of our sides. I wasn't too enthusiastic at the beginning of the day because I really wasn't into seeing the leaning tower of Piza. Later though I got very interested as I read through what our guidebook had to say. That didn't happen though until we got into the city of Piza. Most people don't know that the city of Piza is actually quite large. It's not a huge city, but then it's also not just comprised of the Leaning Tower, the Duomo, and the Baptistry. It has the river Arno running through it, giving it a monopoly on the shipping that occurs there. It also has tons of streets to get lost in. We should know. We got off the highway too early and said, "Ah we'll just follow the signs to the Field of Miracles" (field of miracles is where the Leaning Tower is). Yeah.... It didn't turn out quite like we expected but then yet again we got a dosage of luck/skill and we managed. That took us about an hour to get close and then find a place to park.
After finding a place to park we went and got our shots of coca cola and hot chocolate. My hot chocolate was wonderful, and watching the people stroll by was also a nice treat, one that I don't think I'll ever get tired of. Once done with our beverages we crossed the street, checked out the teeny tiny cathedral that was built right next to the river Arno (it's famous for containing a thorn from the crown of Jesus Christ-but it's only open if you make reservations through a series of important phone calls), and then we walked to the Field of Miracles, following the signs, and the telltale: the English language. There were so many tourists on this trail that we heard English just as much if not more than we heard Italian, even though we were obviously walking through the section that many Italians would take advantage of (were lots and lots of cafe's). As we got closer to the tower we started to hear more of a mix. German, French, Italian, English, and Japanese were all clanging together. Could give a linguist a real headache to be in a tourist trap. Didn't give us any issues. We simply passed the men offering umbrellas (this is when I noticed that the black italians had indeed gotten the lowest jobs and that there was definitely some racism-I didn't see them anywhere other than near the Leaning Tower, selling umbrellas and getting dirty looks from other Italians). As we walked into the Field of Miracles it began to rain. Just a slight drizzle at first so it wasn't hard for me to get that cheesy pic of me holding up the tower that so many other people were doing (if one where far away one would think random people were hailing Hitler), but then as we moved closer to the cathedral it started to really rain. Some people got into the baptistry entryway just to avoid the rain, while others would simply keep walking. Since we didn't have a ticket to get into the baptistry (which you had to get at a museum that was a block or so away) we didn't go in. We instead went into the Duomo where we got to admire the paintings we could see, scorn the people using flash, adore the carvings (my favorite was the angels up at the front), and critic the building. I think I might've gotten pretty good at it. I was the first to notice that the windows weren't spaced right. Some were stuck behind pillars while others were stuck between them and not even in the middle either. I was one of the few to NOT want a picture of the architects grave there in the cathedral.
While in the cathedral we learned that the reason why Piza wasn't standing straight is that (pretty obvious really) it's foundations were unstable, basically the built the Tower on sandy soil. What I didn't know was that the whole Field of Miracles was unstable soil. I began to wonder if the cathedral and the baptistry were crooked too. When we went outside it was poring down rain. Yet again I found a flaw with the architect (or at least the people who maintained the cathedral). They didn't have gutters. That's the whole point of having a gargoyle! To have them spit on you when it rains! Nope, these gargoyles didn't spit. The rain ran off the roof and dropped all along the wall rather than at just the corners. As we walked towards the Leaning Tower I got to watch the rain run from the roof, to the ground, and down the slightly sloped sidewalk to the drain that made up the outside rim of the sidewalk. Again the positioning of this water (like a moat around a castle) made me wonder whether or not the cathedral was on stable ground and whether or not the cathedral wasn't slanted like the tower (or like the baptistry-Ahmee and I decided it looked crooked when we walked out of the cathedral). I decided I was going to walk around the cathedral while Ahmee and Poppy looked at the leaning tower (which has moved more over the years and which STILL had people walking up and around in it even though I thought they said they were doing some damage control to keep it from flopping over). As I walked I tried to work out a way to find out whether or not the cathedral was on slanted ground. I initially thought that the amount of water running off the sides should be an indicator-the more water running off, the steeper the slop was my reasoning), but then I dismissed this idea as a good way to check then and there as the wind blew my umbrella around. If the rain were falling straight down (which I highly doubt it would-you'd basically have to make your own rain by using a hose) then my theory might be a good one, but that rain was being blown at an angle, thus making the one side that seemed to have more water cascading off the roof simply have more water hitting it than the other side which was partially protected.
I walked back to Ahmee and Poppy, disgruntled that I couldn't figure that one out that day, and with my shoes and calfs soaked. We headed out to fill our bellies with something warm to eat (at a bar we grabbed sandwiches and pizza) and then we went back to the car to get back on the road. As we moved farther and farther away from Piza and closer to Carrara the rain stopped. The sun didn't come out for us until we checked out the Duomo in the center of the town, but that didn't stop us from going through the town and up to the quarries to look for a tour. We never got a tour. We decided we'd stop at a shop and look at the carved Carrara marble (some carvings Michelangelo would've scorned and called a "waste of good marble"). I know that the three of us enjoyed the pictured within this shop. They displayed how the Carrara marble was chiseled out back in the day, and how today even modern day equipment sometimes can't hold up to the job (showed a pic of a crane that had it's hind wheels in the air). What I didn't know was that not all of the stones in there were of Carrara marble, I ended up getting an alabaster thingimabobforyourkeysorearrings. It was no problem though because I did grab myself a bit of Carrara marble (there were tiny bits of it in the road and I grabbed two chunks and used them as worry stones). I knew it was Carrara because it was right next to the pit where they were still chiseling away at it, or rather sawing away. After we'd been in this shop and seen the quarries from a distance Ahmee and Poppy were tired and were ready to head back to Rapallo. I however had read the guidebook and had read that Michelangelo's house was in the same square as the Duomo. I wanted to check out this square, not to mention the church that had been made completely of carrara marble. We went back into town, all of us holding our breath because it's a nightmare to get lost in a town full of one way streets. We got lucky again. We didn't end up directly in the church square, we ended up a block away from it in the parking lot of a school. All of the parents were lined up to grab their kids, who we could hear moving around and talking/shouting within the building (the windows were open). We didn't stick around long enough to see the swarm fly out, but when we were heading out we did see the stragglers.
As we walked through the graffiti-covered ally's we came into view of the Duomo. This was a white white building that stood within a pretty small square. There was no one in this square besides the people in the cafe down the street and the few who were heading home. No tourists with flashy cameras, no jumbled words, nothing, not even a bell. We didn't get to go into the church but we did enjoy looking around the square for Michelangelos house, which we think we found (it had all of the carvers utensils on it but not his name-kinda odd). After about 10 minutes of looking around the square and admiring the sunlight that was finally coming out, we headed back through the ally's to the car where we got out of town. On the way back to Rapallo we got to see how the clouds cling to the mountain tops, and how the light casts a glow over everything-except the inside of the tunnels.
Once back at the hotel the sun was feebly shooting out it very last rays of light. It was practically dark at that point and we decided that before the sun went down all the way we needed to go for a walk to check out that picturesque docks that were along the main road. We didn't make it very far because as we got closer to the docks we heard fireworks shoot off. These made Ahmee jump and when she and Poppy saw that it was a bunch of young kids setting them off we decided to turn around and head back to the hotel, we were hungry anyway. We went up to the room, me admiring the glass elevator, dropped off a few things and checked emails, and then went back downstairs to eat.
Ahmee ordered the same thing (in the hopes that they'd get the hint and give her extra), while Poppy and I tried something knew. We all loved our food and really enjoyed talking to each other and about our day AND about the upcoming election. We all told who we wanted as president and why. It was unanimous, all three of us wanted Obama. I said I wanted him because he was intelligent, he was focusing on the job of being president while at the same time running a hell of a campaign. He's researching, talking to important people within the White House, trying to get a feel of how things are run, picking out who he'd like to have run certain things, preparing for the job-rather than just focusing on winning the position. I want the next president to do that. To look ahead and to work to meet the demand. I love that.
After dinner and some very interesting conversation we went upstairs and then went to sleep (some of us faster than others).
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