A Day Of Day Trippin'....

So today we had planned to take off for the day to the old Renaissance town of Sienna...it is a walled city still intact and sits up on a hill.

We headed to the bus station as we were told this was the best way to travel.

I think it was like a 45 minuted drive.

Below is one of the many pictures taken looking out a window that my cousin Lonnie took.

She just loved all the countryside we went through on this trip.

This is a view of Tuscany from the window of a bus.

 we reached the town of Sienna and at first a little confused on where to go as there were no signs. We stopped and got a map that we soon found out we didn't need.

Once we started out on our first street we just walked and tucked the map away.

 This place was beautiful and filled with tons and tons of people.

We walked, we looked, we took pictures, we shopped...shops were everywhere.

I could just imagine back in the day of horses and Knights and their shops and homes along these cobbled roads.

 We stumbled along this beautiful church...we didn't go in...there were lots of people and we just enjoyed it's beauty from afar.

 and behind me inthe picture below is the center of this old town...this square is huge and apparently races use to take place here and today still do twice a year...we just missed one of them, it happened while we were in Rome...how cool would that of been and they also dress in the clothing from back in the day.

 there were tons of people around this square, there was a castle as well and then places to eat but during this time of the day it was all sun...no shade....so we just shopped and walked and took it all in.

 One of the many fruit stores.

 laundry hanging

 and then we found a small quite place along one of the cobble stoned streets that was shaded and so  it was time to sit and relax....we shared a pizza and a bottle of wine

Cheers to the cousins vacation and to another wonderful day.

Over lunch we had decided we had seen all we had come to see and it was time to head back...but since we still had a lot of the day left we decided we would take another trip and this time we would go the same distance but the opposite direction.

We were going to go to Pisa.

So, we felt the best way to accomplish this would be to head back from where we started in Florence and go from there so we would know the right way to get back from Pisa to Florence....after all I didn't want to be lost at night somewhere in Italy.

When we got back to the bus station we found out the bus from Florence doesn't run to Pisa, that we would have to take the train....so we went across the street to the train station and bought our tickets through the ticket machine and then we couldn't figure out where we were to catch the train....there was no platform number.

We got some help but then had to rush cause our train was leaving in 2 minutes...we just made it...which seemed to be our theme on most of these trains.

We arrived in Pisa an hour later .... got a cab.... and said, to the leaning tower please.

Below is the museum and church next to the tower.

People were everywhere.

 It was so cool to see the leaning tower...certain angles it looked like it leaned more and from another angle it didn't looked like it leaned at all...was so strange and cool at the same time.

Below is my cousin Lonnie in front of The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

 and there's me

 and then taking the famous pose of looking like your pushing the tower back up...it was funny seeing all the hundreds of people in different directions taking their poses.

 and then theres me and at my angle it looks like I'm holding it up pretty good...not as much lean.

After our photo moments we walked the shops across from the tower and shopped the shops before they were sarting to close and got our souvenirs....t-shirts for the grand-babies, a photo frame for our picture and my ornament....I look for a ornament every place I go and finally found one and by accident as I was paying for the picture frame, it was in the back of the store near the register...these stores were more stalls than shops and too small to really walk in so most of our looking was from out front...anyway, glad I found my ornament other wise I would of never saw it.

Then it was time to catch a cab back to the train station and end our evening in Florence.

What a night we had....tune back in tomorrow to see how our last night in Florence turned out.