Pisa and Vinci, Italy October 8, 2013

Good morning, SUNSHINE!!

And, we are on the road to the Tuscany region.

Some shots from the drive to Pisa. Enjoy the scenery...

And, here we are: Pisa, Italy. (and my personal favorite picture from the whole trip - taken with my iPhone.)

We had been told by everyone that we just needed an hour tops in Pisa. See the tower and move on, but luckily we got a pass for all of the sites within the Piazza dei Miracoli. We could easily have stayed a full day here. We loved it. A lot. And not just because it was a beautiful sunny day. 

So, first stop is inside the Campanile / Bell Tower.

I got stuck sitting next to the nuns. Pretty sure The Big Man was trying to scare me. But luckily, I made it through ok. No bolts of lightning. Whew.

There were approx 330 warn steps from the bottom to the tippy top. Not gonna lie... I did not make it to the top.

Some views from the top that Mike took:

Next we went to the Pisa Baptistry of St. John. It is the largest baptistry in Italy and it was built in like 1150.

Me at the bottom waving hello to Mike who never found a stair he didn't like/climb.

Next stop was the cathedral and duomo:

The pulpit was built in the 1300s:

Oh goody. Another sarcophagus coughMUMMYcough.

Seriously though. This place was awesome and I had a great time here.

After visiting the Museum of the Opera del Duomo (no pics) across the courtyard, we hit the Camposanto Monumentale. Basically, it is the old cemetery. I am posting a lot of pictures from there because we thought it was pretty awesome. It contained a huge collection of sarcophagi but there are only about 80 that remain. (Uh, 80? Yea, that is still a huge collection to me.)

As you can tell from the pictures, the walls used to be covered in frescoes.

Pisa was awesome, right? We thought so. But we cut it short and headed out to the little town of Vinci. There we had lunch and visited the Leonardo Da Vinci museum and his home.

The Tuscany country view from the top of the small castle - which was home to the museum.

And we took the car up the little road and climbed the hill to Leonardo's home. There was a cute little roadside stand selling olives and espresso and other little treats. The hill was covered in olive trees.

Then we headed back to the coast to our hotel to rest and recharge.

The hotel was really cute and had that 50s feel. Like families visiting the shore for summer vacay... like a Dirty Dancing, Baby loves Johnny feel. We loved it. We wished we would have stayed there longer.

Next stop - Florence.