Posts Tagged ‘playing for pizza’

A Piece Of Pisa, Per Favore

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

When we saw the forecast for lots of rain, we made a route change and went to Parma!  It is a big city, but very nice and friendly (featured in John Grisham’s  book “Playing for Pizza“).  The Cinque Terra we figured would be all washed out, so why not head a mere 2 inches in the guide and see why Mr. Grisham fell in love with this place.  Those two inches contained the French Alps, just a few miles from Turin (site of the 2006 Winter Olympics).  

leaningsteveBeautiful, breathtaking, and…”Coast, we are nearly out of gas!”  Due to all of the switchbacks, we almost ran out of gas.  We arrived and had a great hotel and an awesome italian meal and a long walk around Parma before we headed to our reservation at Camp Darby in Pisa (a little-known military base with beautiful accomodations).

So heading out early we had to cross…guess what?   The Italian Alps!  But this time we took a major highway with buckets of tunnels and incredible engineering feats. 

We were scheduled to be in Pisa around 1 pm, but we got in at the ususal Morales-time table of 4:30 (at least it was still daylight).  We managed to go against the traffic, swimming upstream, and see the bapistrypisasights in town with fewer tourists as it was near closing. With the start of Easter week and school breaks, this place is bedlam.

We passed on climbing the  Tower, but were moved by our time in the Duomo and in the Bapistry.  The acoustics in the bapistry is such that every 30 minutes a guide comes in and sings a trio of notes spaced apart, but because of the echo and it’s 10 second length, it comes out sounding like 3 people singing at once (a full chord)!

It is amazing to actually be here and see this all in person.  And it blows me away to see and to know the effort, talent, devotion, and faith to build it all. Amazing!