Europe trip (Part 9): Pisa, Fiesole and Volpaia

Part 1 (Paris) - Part 2 (more Paris) - Part 3 (Fonte de' Medici) - Part 4 (Montalcino and Montefiridolfi) - Part 5 (La Petraia) - Part 6 (Florence) - Part 7 (more Florence) - Part 8 (Cinque Terre) - Part 9 (Pisa, Fiesole and Volpaia) - Part 10 (Lost in Siena) - Part 11 (Siena) - Part 12 (Rome) - Final

As you can see from photo above, we visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I confess I was more impressed by the tower than I expected to be. Impressed that it hadn't toppled over, that is.

Intended to be a regular vertical tower, the construction of the Tower of Pisa began in 1173 but started to lean soon after, caused by bad design with a mere three-meter foundation in weak, unstable subsoil. Here's the base of the tower:



Buildings nearby also seem to have stability issues:



Legend has it that Galileo dropped two cannon balls of different masses from the tower to demonstrate that their descending speed was independent of their mass, but some believe this is only a myth (that Galileo used this tower, not the physics part).

Some attempts to straighten the tower made the lean only worse. In 1990, the tower was closed to the public and was only reopened after a decade of corrective reconstruction and stabilization efforts.

I suppose they were in a quandary. They needed to stabilize or straighten the tower enough so that it wouldn't endanger the lives of residents and tourists, but if they managed to straighten the tower completely, well...the Non-Leaning Tower of Pisa wouldn't be nearly a big a tourist draw, would it? Here's one of the many vendors near the Leaning Tower (useful in case one couldn't find the right purse in Florence):



I found some of the "souvenirs" somewhat bewildering:



Though we didn't climb the Tower of Pisa (15 Euros per person seemed a bit steep), we went inside the Pisa cathedral:



According to this article, Galileo supposedly observed the lamp in this picture swinging and that the lamp always required the same amount of time to complete an oscillation, no matter how large the range of the swing. "Later in life Galileo verified this observation experimentally and suggested that the principle of the pendulum might be applied to the regulation of clocks."

During our trip, we also visited Fiesole, an ancient town and episcopal perched on a steep hill overlooking the Arno and Mugnone valleys some 8 km northeast of Florence. Here's a photo that Jeff took after a hilltop climb:



We visited the museum, where we explored Etruscan ruins in an archaelogical park. The 2000-seat theatre in the photo below was discovered in 1809, excavated from 1873. It dates from the 1st century B.C.

The 1st century B.C.!!

I thought it very cool that it was obviously still being used for some kind of performances, since men were setting up for something while we visited:



Another town we visited during our trip was Volpaia, to have lunch at a restaurant that a friend of Ginny's had recommended.



Above: sunset from Ristorante La Bottega in Volpaia, where I had Grilled Aubergine With Mint, and Wild Boar With Olives.



Here's an interesting article about a woman who drove to Volpaia with the purpose of eating at the same restaurant. I love her attitude about getting lost:

"Don't worry about getting lost because no one is ever truly lost in Italy. It's only the momentary distractions from the history and the culture, added to the sights and sounds emanating from a vibrant landscape, that frequently overwhelm the senses and cause one to merely, 'think' they are lost."

We got lost several times in Italy. The most memorable time was in Siena...but that's a story in itself, for the next Blathering. :-)

To be continued...

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