Unexpected Treasure...

Pisa, Italy- We arrived in Pisa at about 10:30am, on Easter Sunday. We found a side street, parked the car and walked over to the square. As we approached the entrance gates, our mouths dropped with awe from what we began to see. The gate opened into a huge courtyard lined with street vendors selling everything under the sun dealing with Pisa and that leaning tower. We stopped and tried to take in all of the sites.

It was very crowded as we learned Easter mass was starting shortly. But the bonus with mass going on is that we got admission to the Duomo Cathedral for free! We stood at the entrance and saw 6-8 priests, some quite high up in the priest chain, as they prepared for the procession.

We made our way down to the front of the church and saw the amazing architecture of the old cathedral. We also could hear the beautiful sounds of the choir as mass was beginning. Kate got some amazing video, listen below.

After we attended Easter mass (this is for the moms’, we only stayed 10 minutes), we walked out the door and to the base of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was a site to behold. We took a ton of pictures as we walked all around the tower. As you can see below, sometime the tower magically straightens up for some pictures, can you see the difference? Can you guess who took the pictures?

After we saw the Tower, we walked back to the street vendors and bought some gifts and souvenirs. From there, we loaded the car and headed off for our next adventure.

Cinque Terre, Day Two

On day two in Cinque Terre we ventured out to hike between some of the cities. We took the ferry one city down and then hopped on a trail which was described as difficult and should take us 1 ½ - 2 hours. We started out by hiking up and seeing a gorgeous view of Vernazza, the city we had just left.

The trail had many stairs, steep climbs, hills, rocks and more. Kate, Shannon and I did well for the first ten minutes, then the excitement of “oh, let’s go hiking” wore off. The trail got the best of us after a half hour or so, so we stopped for lunch. After many swear words and brief stops, we made it to Corniglia.

From here we stopped to explore the town and of course, find some Coke Lights and gelato!! Kate decided she had had enough of the trails on hopped on the train to the next town. Shannon and I made the predicted 45 minutes hike in just over 35 minutes. We met up with Kate, did a little window shopping and then caught the ferry back to Vernazza to finish up our shopping.

Upon arriving back to Monterosso Al Mare, we walked into the part of the city called “old town”. We found some great shops and restaurants. We decided we wanted pizza and found little hole in the wall shop. They had about 70 different pizza options and we just had to tell them the number we wanted. It was great!!

We spent our last night in Cinque Terre walking the beach and finding some good deals at the grocery store on some beer and local wine. We went home, packed and got one more night of sleep in the land of Ikea.

Cinque Terre, Day One

So Friday morning Kate, Shannon and I loaded the car and headed off for Italy. It took us about 5 hours to get there, including a stop or two for some snacks and a bathroom break.

We arrive in Cinque Terre, in a town called Monterosso Al Mere. We found our apartment and were pleasantly surprised at the size of it!! It was cut and paste from an Ikea catalog. Stickers still on many of the utensils! After dropping our bags we ventured into town. About a 5 minute walk lead us to the beach.

We walked along and checked out the shops and restaurants. We walked over a hill and found the “old town” and the ferry to the other towns. We had no real agenda so we decided to jump on the next ferry to go exploring. We were blessed with good weather and checked out a town called Manarola. Cinque Terre means 5 towns so we thought we had a good day hitting two of them right away! The towns were amazing with colors, people, food and GELATO!!

We walked and found some good shops and pictures. Check out all we did our first day there.