visiting pisa

george, paola, frano in pisa




yesterday we did little, except go to the beach. paola's dad let us use his old jeep, that is typically used for farming duties, to drive to the beach. it was fun to drive an old car again. it reminded me of my old bug. after we left the beach, we found out that the parking space that we left the car in was a no-parking space. we could have gotten the car towed away, but nothing happened, so all is just fine.

today we went to pisa, to see the sites there. al i thought that was there was a leaning building, but there was a lot more. there is a town that went through past to at least the medeival period (several buildings were around a thousand years old). there were many churches, and paola's dad explained to us the different aspects of the architecture, ranging from medieval, to renaissance, to gothic, and even muslim and armenian. his explainations enhanced the experience. in the main center, there was the leaning tower, a cathedral, and a bapistry. i was most impressed with the cathedral (i have never been a fan of the leaning tower, but it still impressed me seeing it in person). we also went inside the cathedral and the bapistry (i didnt feel like climbing the steps to the top of the leaning tower). another site that impressed me was a university that was designed by vassari. he is actually more well known for writing the lives (short biographies) of the rennaisance painters (so many individuals are included that it is often not published completely, but usually only covering the 20 or so most famous renaissance artists).

i will post pictures later, since we cant get a direct connection to our computer, but rather have to copy to a disk, then upload to the disk. we should put pictures up by tuesday evening.