Pictures!

Ah! Not enough time to post lots of pictures. Here are a few.

Here I am at the Leaning Tower. While we were there, the Chinese President (or ambassador?) who was here for the G8 Summit arrived with a GIANT motorcade. Pisa was the first place we ate pizza. A loved it. I preferred the pizza in Florence, where we had our very best food. I now adore prosciutto and I have a new and abiding love for eating smoked pig parts.

This is the baptistry (baptistery?) at Pisa. It also leans but in the opposite direction. This is where the amazing acoustics are.

Yesterday we went to Venice. I have my handy Rick Steves Italy guidebook with me, which is how we knew that if you have a backpack to check, you can skip the line at St. Mark's. I took one for the team and dragged my bag into the city, so we could check it. According to the guidebook, two people per bag check can enter the basilica ahead of the line, so we wanted to check A's bag too, but only backpacks are allowed to be left. When we hesitated, one of the bag check staff told us to go ahead, because the check was good for all four of us. And then a second employee piped up with, Stop reading, Rick Steves! It's bull! The basilica was gorgeous, we got in fast, and we paid to go into the treasury so we could see the relics (including a mummified hand) that the Venetians stole from Constantinople. And then we took off to the lagoon, avoiding most of the crowds most of the day. When we came back to Venice proper, we strolled through the backside, which was practically deserted. Most of the tourists stick to the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark's areas.

Here I am with the Coordinatrix and A on Burano, a fishing village in the Lagoon known for its lace work. So charming! The story goes that the houses are painted brightly so that when the men came home drunk, they could find their homes.



Last night I was walking through the hotel lobby, when an Italian man smiled and greeted me. I smiled too. I'm polite. Then he started walking with me, patted me on the back, and asked me how I was doing. It took me a minute to realize it was our driver, Enzo (it had been his day off and I didn't recognize him). Enzo (who I thought was named Ansel for a bit) is so nice to us and helps us off the bus and calls us Bella, actually all the Italian men call us that. It's very endearing.