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).
Beautiful, 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 
sights 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!
Tags: alps, bapistry, camp darby, cinque terre, duomo, john grisham, parma, pisa, playing for pizza
I got in “trouble” at pisa once. We were inside the baptistry, we saw an open door, so we decided to go inside. It was a door that led up some stairs into the roof. We weren’t supposed to be there, but the view from up there was amazing. I have it all on vhs (I need to convert some vhs movies). It was a fun adventure.
We got in lots of trouble going the wrong way on bus lanes…i am sure cameras (traffic type) took plenty of pictures to ticket us. Anxious that tomorrow is all I hope it will be.
what is tomorrow?
what are you hoping it to be?
Montalcino…2 months worth…peace, quiet…company…wine…reflection…more wine…walks…more wine…then on the road again…augh!
Oh, I agree! It is amazing the sound that is created in the baptistry with the one guy singing.
climbing the tower? they are letting people do that again?
3 hours delay is pretty fast for the Morales-time
Well Pisa,you arrived safely, hope Lucy is still intact. Has the weather improved? Cold and wet here at moment. It all looks very beautiful there, but I think I must be an Italianofile as I loved driving through tunnels and the very sharp bends on the mountain roads of course the food was fab, the wine mmmm. Have you tried the italian equivalent of champagneyet, oh dear, I can taste it now. Enjoy Enjoy Enjoy.
Yes you can climb the tower…they feel they have it stabilized for the next 200 years. And scaffolding, always the scaffolding. And extra 5 euro
We were alone in the Bapistry…last tourist when I started to hum softly…i got shhhhed by a guard. I did sing softly in Mont St Michel and it was cool. I thought humming in some of these cathedrals will be something I will try getting away with. I am also light a candle with my church money where that is available.
So I just recently got a machine to transfer some vhs to dvd…thought I would test it out with this. Here we are in the baptistry on my trip in 1997. Due to bad editing, this video doesnt really start till the 20th second. But then you will hear the security guard singing making the beautiful noise. Then, through the crowd, you will see that the security guard is a tiny old man, barely speaking above a whisper.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnU8l32Pzmo