To read about our trip from the beginning click on "older posts."
May 29, 2005--Heading to Pisa was uneventful until we got off the train and I decided that we walk to our Hotel instead of calling for a taxi. Big mistake! It really wasn’t that far.....just down the street, across the bridge, left along the river, then right down another street. By the time we got to Hotel Francesco a wheel busted on our luggage and we ended up having to drag it a few blocks. Kevin says it was more like half a mile and wasn’t too happy with my decision to save a few euros. All I can say is that the luggage held out to the end since Pisa was our last stop in Italy before heading home.
Hotel Francesco was located only a block away from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We had a nice chat with the receptionist then put our broken luggage in the room and headed to the Piazza dei Miracoli. Pisa was very nice, although very touristy. There were long lines of vendors trying to sell cheap, tacky souvenirs. I did find some cute “Leaning Tower of Pisa” lollipops for some of my little friends back home. I think the guy was in seventh heaven when I told him I wanted to buy twenty of them. He even threw in a few extra on the house. We didn’t climb the tower. Just seeing it leaning was enough for me.
That evening we had dinner on the patio of a place just down from the Hotel. We enjoyed our last meal in Italy and headed back to the Hotel. We stopped to talk to the repectionist when all of a sudden we heard the sound of voices and hymns blasting down the street from a outside speaker. Of course, it was all in Italian so we didn’t understand what it was all about. The receptionist remarked that it must be coming from the apartment of a “local religious fanatic”, but it turned out to be a little more than that. Not long after the broadcast had begun, we saw a huge religious procession filing down the street—most were dressed in black, but there were a number of young girls dressed in white dresses for their first communion. As it turned out, the broadcast was of the Eucharistic Conference that was taking place, Pope Benedict’s first major event outside of Rome. It was very strange: the procession felt like an event from a previous age suddenly intruding on the modern world.
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