Pisa and Florence... and also Venice

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is, indeed, leaning. 

A highlight of our visit to Florence was dinner one evening
with Leonardo
 a Florentine leather goods dealer.

Florence's cathedral

How presumptuous!

Delicious tiramisu

After three full days in Rome, our tour group headed north along the Italian coast, stopping in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. The town was overflowing with tourists, but we saw the tower in spite of them.

The scenery this day consisted of the blue Mediterranean on our left, olive tree groves, and vineyards. If I hadn't believed earlier that I was in Italy, I surely would have believed it now.

Following our stop in Pisa, we headed east toward Tuscany, passing through at least twenty mountain tunnels to get to Florence.

Gondolas in Venice

 We enjoyed the beautiful architecture of Florence, and seeing Michaelangelo's David, and visiting a leather shop and a Murano glass factory, ...but an especially fond memory involves our meeting and dining with Leonardo. What a gracious and generous gentleman! He works in Florence in the leather business started by his father and which he now owns, and he makes frequent trips to California to the company (Cavallini) where Jim and Lynn's son Erik worked for several years. When Erik heard we were going to visit Florence, he insisted we meet Leonardo.

Leonardo took us to his favorite little restaurant near his shop, helped us order our meals (Note my tiramisu for dessert. Absolutely delicious!), stealthily paid for the entire dinner when the four of us weren't aware of it, and gave Lynn and me each one of his leather products before the evening ended.

It was rather sad to spend so little time with Leonardo. We're hoping he'll come to Maine with his wife and young son some time, so we can return his hospitality.

From Florence it was on to Venice.

I was nervous about visiting Venice, because I had this preconceived notion that getting around in this city of canals would be extremely difficult.

I was wrong. Water taxis are at one's serice for long "walks" (although they're expensive), and there are plenty of areas accessible by foot.

 Of course our two days in Venice had to include a gondola ride! This was relaxing and fun. Lynn, a former music teacher, was thrilled when the singer and his accompanist climbed aboard our gondola with us. Other gondola riders nearby weren't so lucky.

Lellabella Yarn Shop, Venice (Be still, my heart!(

Unfortunately I felt the need to google "yarn shops, Venice" on my iPad and dicovered Lellabella. I badly wanted to stop in for a visit, so Ken, Jim, and Lynn tolerantly followed along as I searched up and down the shops lining the canals to locate this place.

Finally we found it, but it was closed! In much if not all of Italy, shops close from around 1:00 to around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. We got to the shop at 1:15, and we couldn't wait for it to reopen because the gondola ride awaited us.

If you look closely at the top of the photo, you'll see the reflections of Lynn and me as we look at the luscious Italian yarns so near, but yet so far.

Our personal troubadour as we take a gondola ride 

At the Rialto, Venice

The Rialto is Venice's most popular canal bridge, so we had to have our photos taken there, of course.

It was now time for the last stop of our time in Italy: Assisi. That's the subject of my next post.