Pisa, Can we Climb the Leaning Tower?

Hopefully, you got my corny joke?...Anyone? 

Pisa was next on our list, and we were only planning on staying there for a few hours.  Our goal was to see a little of the city and climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Like I mentioned in my last post, I had visited Pisa before but I was unable to climb the tower because we didn't have tickets.  Jeff and I made sure we got tickets this round.

We had about 45 minutes before we could climb the tower.  We visited the church nearby, and took some pictures of the other buildings and of course, the tower.  So, as I had read on the tickets I was not allowed to bring my bag into the tower for safety reasons.  They mentioned there would be a cloak room available, so I just assumed it was inside the tower. Wrong!  After we had walked around, and then stood in line for 10 minutes a man told me I needed to get out of line and put my bag in the cloak room across the lawn.  Just my luck, a huge tour group cut in front of me in line and I had to wait over 15 minutes to give them my bag.  I was freaking out, given our tickets said that we had to be on time, or they wouldn't let us go up.  The tickets were not cheap...

 It is actually difficult to take pictures of the tower as you want to naturally "correct" the lean.  This was one of our better shots.  

The tower!

Luckily, we went on the 12:00 tour, and they let us go up with no problems.  We kept going 'round and 'round to get to the top.  You could definitely feel the lean of the building when you were walking up, and especially at times at the top.  Although, there was a fence that surrounded the area, it still made me feel a little uneasy as I felt I was going to slide off the top.  I did not.  Jeff and I took a few pictures, and enjoyed our time at the top by sitting on the steps.

 Beautiful weather and views!

 "Do not touch the bells"

We made it!

We headed back down, and walked towards the train station as it was already time to go to our next destination.  We knew this was not going to be a spot that we were planning on spending much time.  We enjoyed our visit, and were very happy that we could check "Climbing the Leaning Tower" off of our bucket lists.

Onto the next adventure...

My Ol' Stompin' Grounds

Siena, Italy was next on our list after Bologna.  We traveled by train to get there.  Not only is this the town I spent a month studying abroad, but it is also one of the most "Italian" cities you can visit.  Since it is in Tuscany, it and the area surrounding Siena is just gorgeous.  Small, quaint, and now....highly touristy town.

On the train! 

A little background, so some of the photographs below don't confuse you... I spent a month in Siena studying abroad learning Italian Sign Language (I also took Italian & a deaf culture course).  The program was discussed in one of my American Sign Language classes, so I begged my parents to send me on it that upcoming summer.  I went to classes 4.5 days a week (all day), and then was able to travel on the weekends (Pisa, Florence, Rome).  I stayed with a local family, who treated my friend and I amazingly.  We had a great experience, and I wished I had still kept in contact with them.

Now onto the good stuff...

We dropped our luggage off at the hotel, and began our exploration.  We walked a little around the city, but then sat down to enjoy the Piazza del Campo, which is a large area where there are shops, restaurants, and the large tower, Torre del Mangia.  We grabbed a couple slices of pizza.  Jeff tried a tuna slice, which smelled awful, but he seemed to eat it all. Gross. We ate our pizzas in the piazza and then got tickets to climb the tower. Jeff and I had about 45 minutes until we could climb the tower, so I decided to walk him down the street to the flat I stayed in while living in Siena.

 Hanging out in the piazza

I stayed in the flat with the shutters open. 

We then climbed the tower.  This was one item that I didn't do during my time in Siena. I'm not sure why, but Jeff and I enjoyed the climb as well as the view.  The tower was not nearly as scary as the one in Bologna, but there were a few times when the look down freaked you out a bit.

 One of the views from the top!

We walked to the Siena Cathedral, which always reminds me of the snake scene in Beetlejuice.  Take a look at the pictures below, and you'll see what I mean.  We walked around in side for a while, and then walked on through the city.  We ended up walking to the Siena School for Liberal Arts where I went to school, but quickly found out that it was closed.  It was a complete shock and bummer to see the garden area all grown out and the trees non-trimmed.  From the last I heard it was still a functioning school, so I just assumed they moved.  Sidenote: They did move locations, I looked it up when we came home. 

 Siena Cathedral

Inside the cathedral

In front of the school

Jeff and I walked up the Fortezza Medicea (fortress).  It has some great views of Siena, and we enjoyed sitting down in the amphitheater and taking it all in.  I wished the timing would have worked out as they have cinemas in the fortress during the summer.

 View from the fortress

View from the amphitheater

We headed back to the hotel to find out that they had overbooked...and we couldn't stay there.  Looking back, we probably should have fought it more considering we were there 3 hours earlier and our room was not ready.  The look on their faces when we gave them our luggage tags was priceless, as they knew they screwed up. They set us up in another hotel, which had an even better view. It was more quaint as it only had 8 rooms.

View from our hotel balcony

Next on the agenda was to go back to the piazza where there was an festival going on.  There were a couple bands that would walk around the city playing energetic music.  There were tents set up in the area and were promoting their candidacy for the Capital of Culture in Europe.  Not exactly sure what it means, but I'm guessing if Siena is selected that means...more tourists. I think it will eventually lose its small-city feel.  We sat in the piazza drinking wine and people watching.

We ended up back at the hotel to drink the rest of our wine and enjoy our beautiful balcony view.  We sat there talking for hours, and grabbed a quick dinner...one of my favorites might I add.  It was this little local food stand.  Jeff got some sort of keebab "hotdog" and I got a falafel loaded with all kinds of goodies.  We woke up early, missed the amazing breakfast spread our cute little hotel had sat out and started our next journey on the train.

Night time shot from our hotel balcony with a couple glasses of wine

Onto the next adventure...

Climbin' Peaks

A day filled with picnic in the boot, walking up peaks, stepping in mud, dodging sheep poop, and running from sheep. That pretty much sums up our adventure on Saturday. It took about an hour to get to these peaks and we decided to go to one called the Dark Peak. It was beautiful, and we're excited to try a few more areas in the future.

Our fun-filled day started with a yummy picnic in the boot (i.e. trunk) of our car. Sandwiches, pretzels, Dr. Pepper, & cookies. We were ready to hit the off-road trails after that!

We walked around on a road for a while, until my wonderful husband had the brilliant idea of going off-path. I was on board at first, and quickly began to panic as I felt my whole body sway from one side to the other. I was for sure I was going to be tumbling down the peak at any moment. We would get moving quickly, then we would run into mini-rivers of water/mud. Jeff flawlessly went through them, not me. I managed to step in the deepest part of the mud. My shoe has recovered nicely after Jeff grabbed some grass (carefully, might I add: sheep poop everywhere!) and began to clean me up. We continued on and eventually made it to the top of the peak. 

 The sheep were staring us down...

We made it passed the mud and it finally started to flatten out (hints my smile at that point!). The picture on the right was the small "path" we took to get to the top of the peak. 

Doesn't look too bad at this point, and my sock surprisingly survived! 

Once we made it to the top, we explored and went up higher on some larger peaks. Our legs were hurting as we made it to the top of a few of them.

 

 We made it to the top of all three of those peaks you see! 

We turned back and decided to take another route back down, so we headed to the top of the tallest peak we saw (thinking the path would lead close to our car). The views were beautiful, as you can see so we stopped to take it all in and then found a grassy path to take back down to the bottom. 

 

Behind me is the top of the last peak we "climbed". 

 

 Great day in the Peak District!

Also, Happy UK Mother's Day to all the mums out there, especially our own! We love you!

FYI: DST happened over here now. Indy friends & family we're back to a 5 hour difference.