Tuscany Day Tour - Pisa and Chianti

Thursday October 30th:

Manuele was back for another exciting day of touring with us. He was early again and we were on the way to Pisa. There had been much debate about making the trek to Pisa, especially after we changed the plan for Friday. Pisa was to the northwest and Chianti is to the southeast. These were the two destinations for the day in order to make Sienna and Montepulciano on Friday. This was going to be a long way in the wrong direction to see a relatively small tower that many websites list as an overrated attraction. In the end it was all about us all wanting to see this famous landmark. The kids were very excited about seeing it which sealed the deal. This drive was the only time that we really hit some traffic. There were several slow downs along the way but it ended up okay. On the highways in Italy they have these speed traps set up in random spots on the road. They are not sneaky about it since there is a sign with a policeman on it identifying each location. Manuele knew when most of these were coming up and would slow down in advance. Even if you had never been on this road and you paid attention you could avoid them pretty easily I think. 

When we got to the city of Pisa we had more traffic to navigate before getting to the main square. The leaning tower is in an old town  square with a large cathedral. Manuele dropped us off after some instruction and let us explore. The first order of business was the corny photo shoot. I did not have the patience for this for too long. We did get a couple of cute shots.  

The effects were not perfect, but we took the pictures. David has been wanting to climb everything that has an option to climb. This time I gave in to climb the leaning tower with him. We bought our ticket and reported to the tower at our scheduled time. Katherine is not yet old enough to climb, and she was on the fence about it anyway. She stayed behind with Cindy and Hutch. We went inside the tower for a short introduction before the climb. I was very surprised to find the tower is just empty in the middle. 

Above you can see a small window that allows you to look down from the top. Below was the stair case to get up and down. The stairs spiraled around the the outer part of the tower. You can see to David's right below the interior wall that makes up the middle empty section.

While making the climb it struck me just how much marble was in this tower. Every square inch all around was marble. It was no wonder why it was leaning. The overall weight of the tower has been calculated at 14,453 TONS!! David and I started behind several people but he was climbing fast and I was keeping up. By the time we got to the top we were first and only about four minutes had elapsed. I was glad that it was a cool day. Once we reached the top we got to look around and take some pictures. The rest of our group was down below in the shadow of the tower waiting for us. See Katherine's yellow shirt near the red van?

These pictures were not the greatest but the zoom lens caught Katherine being Katherine. These two pictures just make me smile.

The mountains in the distance are where a lot of the marble and travertine come from. You can see below the cathedral is very close to the tower.

The above stair case is just the last section. The outer stairs get you to a lower observation point then you take this even more narrow flight up to the very top. There are several bells on the outer part of the top deck. You can see the window to look down into the middle of the tower.

We made our way down. David made the decent is less than two minutes. I was slower since there were people coming up that I did not want to knock over in this narrow area. We all made our way into the cathedral to look around.

A few more pictures before we walked around the shopping area. The one above I Think was the best angle to show how much it leans. We got a Ferguson Four family shot below.

Is it me or does it seem like the baptistery building on the back left is also leaning?

In the end the drive was not so bad and I think all of us enjoyed seeing the famous leaning tower. Manuele picked us up and drove us to the Chianti region. Our first stop was in the town of Greve in Chianti for lunch. We had a nice lunch on the town square and got to spend some time shopping and looking around.

The black rooster is the famous icon for Chianti Classico. Manuele has educated us on wine from several regions of Italy, but we learned the most about Chianti.

We spent some time driving around the region and had some good opportunities to stop and enjoy the rolling hills and scenery.

Finally our last stop of the day was for a winery tour and wine tasting at Querceto di Castellina. This might be the most memorable of all for me. The road leading up to the house had a row of the Italian Cypress trees, which I love. On this hill was the main vines with a section of merlot vines to contrast the colors.

Manuele knows these people well. One of the brothers was there giving a tour to a young couple, Americans from Texas I think. At least one of them was. Since the owner was busy Manuele just did the tour himself. We got to see all of the inner workings of the place before doing our wine tasting.

This was a place all about family. One of the six wines they have is named after the mother. Another one is named after the four year old daughter that lives there, Livia. Her bottle is below with her footprint on it.

As it turned out, Livia was there and was excited to find David and Katherine. When we started the wine tasting the kids played around the estate and entertained Livia. The little girl knew Italian and French but not much English yet. She still had fun running around with the kids.

 

Did I mention that I love these trees? This estate has a private guest house they rent out. I might be looking into that in a few years. I could hang out here for a few weeks and do nothing but eat fresh food and drink wine. Who is with me?

The other couple started their tasting at the same time so we let them have some space and had Manuele do his thing with us. By this time was had already purchased wine from two other locations and had no room left. Once we got back to Germany I had to place an order to ship us some of the Belvedere wine from Querceto di Castellina.

We spent a lot of time here. The sun was setting and the temperature was cool but nice. I kept getting up and taking pictures during the different stages of the sunset.

We had a scenic drive on the way back to Certaldo. Manuele pulled over for me one more time to get a very late dusk picture. It was another wonderful day. 

We did make it back to our restaurant in Certaldo that evening. It was not as good this time around. Our waiter guy had the night off and the food was not as good as the first time. We still managed to have a nice dinner. That is, up until I asked David to try a small bite of Creme Brulee. I did not plan to have a knock down drag out battle of wills with the kid, but it escalated quickly. After all I was just asking him to try Creme Brule. Who doesn't like that? He kind of got out of it by "accidentally" dropping the bite on the floor. I was not happy about it but he will try it the next time there is an opportunity to order it. 

Only one more touring day left before we head home.