Pisa and Volterra Day 7

Good morning Day 7. I don't think any of us slept well last night so our eyes were a bit puffy at the 8:30am breakfast meeting time. We filled up with some goodies and we were all ready to head out on our day trip on time. We said goodbye to Big John and Luna the cat and hit the road. I drove today and Cara navigated with our freshly re-loaded cellular data (don't worry - Guy the master navigator was keeping a close eye on us). The roads curved and curved ... up and down ... switchbacks and only the rare straight away. Luckily, we have all stayed car-sick-free.

Our drive to Pisa was about an hour and a half and our GPS decided to temporarily go kapoot right as we entered the town. But that is ok...we found signs pointing us to the famous tower. As we parked, Nigerian peddlers were lining the streets, arms full of all kinds of things to buy. When we got out of the car they told us if we bought something they would "watch our cars". Pretty much sounded like a soft threat, but we took our chances and kept walking. At lunch we joked that they had probably already broken into the car and were playing games on the kids' ipads. LOL.

As we walked toward the church, suddenly the iconic tower came into view. There it was. The leaning tower. Actually, I find it to be quite spectacular. We were here about 10 years ago and spent the night in Pisa before going to the Island of Elba. The reason I remember this is because I left my BEST EVER converter/adaptor in the wall of the hotel and didn't remember until I was about 2 hours into the train ride out of town. Sigh. (Ring any bells Amanda Hickman?) So as we approached the tower, the kids did the mandatory photo ops where they appeared to be holding up the tower. :) They got a kick out of it. So next...two things needed to happen, we needed to get tickets to go up into the tower and use the restroom. So we gathered up some coins to go to the WC and John went to get tickets. I wasn't 100% sure I'd be able to handle the climb up today (claustrophobia) but told John if it was 10 euros or less I'd try. So after we reconvened, we had successfully purchased tickets and had paid our euros to use the restroom (kids were free). Our tickets were not until 1:45 and it was just 11:30, so we decided to find a place for lunch. Road trips make one hungry.

Gabby chose our restaurant today and we had a wonderful time. We ate at the Restaurante L'Europeo. It is right in the center of the action, and not sure it was on Trip Advisor's top 10, but the servers were very nice (even after Guy dropped and broke a plate) and the food was good! We had pizzas, bruchettas, pastas and John had seafood risotto. (Not so good...but sometimes when you get a dish with shrimps with the heads still on it can be more than a bit fishy tasting). However, the strawberry topped panna cotta saved the day.

So after lunch we still had about 45 minutes, some went to explore the church and others hit the shops. When it came our time to go in, we were first funneled into the lower area where the ticket girl gave a brief talk on the history of the tower in both Italian and English. After the talk was over we were allowed to go up the 257 steps to the top. We let everyone else go first in case I had to do a U turn on the steps. So while we waited in the slanted room, we videoed rolling a coin across the floor to show steep the slant was. :) So up we go. I made it around one turn and the narrow stairwell with no windows I began to feel it coming on. First starts the racing heart and then the feeling of fear I can't quite put into words. Rosalie was behind me and Cara was ahead. I said I didn't think I could do it and Cara walked ahead and reported the next window was just around the bend. So I clutched my sweaty hand into Rosalie's and with my death grip onto my sister-in-law we made it to the top. Luckily everyone was plenty far ahead and I didn't have to stop and Cara was giving me the play by play of what was next. Team work!

At the top we got to experience fear #2. Heights. There was a big fence around the top (in the past the fence was just a rail and it became a very popular place to commit suicide. So now the rail is a 7 foot fence. Still, on the side that is leaning closest to the ground, it is a very uncomfortable because you do feel a sensation you could slip and the only thing between you and death is a fence. What made it worse is it became congested at the top and you couldn't go forward or backward, so I found myself hugging the wall as much as I could because the edge was just a bit too close for comfort. I wasn't alone in my fear of heights as Guy's brother John and I were tolerating the experience with a different kind of excitement than the rest of the group. We took some nice photos from the top, a selfie or two, asked a nice man to do a family shot and even tho we had a few more minutes before we had to go down, we went ahead and finished our tour. Of course, for those of you that have claustrophobia in stairwells, you know going down is a piece of cake. Tour of the Leaning Tower of Pisa ... done and done!

Heading back to the car with the worst gelato of the trip in my belly, we wondered how difficult it would be when we didn't buy anything from the gentleman "protecting" our car. Peddlers still lining the streets, it was kind of intimidating but there were other tourists besides us on the street, but still, it was kind of weird. When we got to the car, our guy was nowhere to be seen, so we wiggled our way out of the parking spot, got the GPS back on (thanks to Cara) and off we went. The way home seemed shorter than the way there as everything looked familiar. We ate some snacks and opted for a detour to Volterra, which was only 20 minutes off the path. Once we arrived and circled around a bit, we found a primo parking spot and headed into the cool little town. Of course the hype of Twilight is much less than it was two years ago when Guy and I were here, but it is still fun for the fans of the book series. Guy helped me find the one particular shop I had bought all my jewelry in before as I had just broken my necklace from there less than a month ago. It was also Sunday and about 40% of the shops were closed. However, as luck would have it, my gal's store was open and I replaced my double heart necklace and picked up a few more goodies. We shopped around the town for another hour or so, got a good gelato and headed for home. We had dinner reservations at the hotel restaurant for 7:30 so the day worked out really nicely as we had time to rest, freshen up and eat a good meal.

At dinner we had the option to sit outside, but we felt like we might be a bit more comfy inside. The night air was lovely, but maybe just a bit too chilly for comfort. Most of us did a repeat of our meal here the first night as it was SO GOOD, but with the addition of a homemade pasta with zucchini and sausage which was outstanding. Guy is hoping they can fix that for him for lunch tomorrow. After dinner we gathered in the coffee bar and we all had some kind of yummy drink and Cara and I "air dropped" photos to each other on our phones. Oh..and Luna was napping in a chair so we took some pictures of her and of course got some kitty love in before bed. A perfect day.