Leaning Tower of Pisa

All the tourists were posing with their hands doing Taichi moves to push against the Pisa tower. At first I was having fun observing these people. After a while, I realized we were just regular tourists like these folks and we had to do the routine tourists pose too since we are already here.

Pisa's leaning tower

Our rental car is the Ford Focus on the left. It has a diesel engine, even the BMW on the right has a diesel engine. Diesel is popular in Europe. The Ford Focus has a manual gear box, and I find the acceleration to be adequate even though the engine is only 1.8liter.

We drove 80km from Florence to Pisa to see the leaning tower. I have always remember the leaning from my primary school text book. I remembered referencing the Pisa tower when I wrote some of my school essay in the form of "Pada satu hari, Ali and Ahmat pergi ke menara Pisa." So, I'm glad to be able to see the leaning tower in person. To be honest, the leaning tower of Pisa is just a plain jane tower. Without the engineering or site selection mistake, Pisa's tower will be just another tower in Italy.


Meredith holding on to her sunblock. She didn't know she was at the leaning tower. She just know it was a hot, hot day, almost as hot as Houston.

Prosciutto Cruddo

Most of streets in Italy are quite narrow. Traffic are chaotic just like Malaysia. Italian drivers will make three lanes out of a two lanes street just like in Malaysia. So if you can drive in Malaysia, you wouldn't be intimidated by traffic here.


Most of the cars are small. Unlike Houston, it is rare to see nicer cars such as this new Audi TT.

We drove to a town called Greve in Chianti region of Tuscany and stumbled upon this delightful shop selling prosciutto cruddo. Prosciutto cruddo is known simply as prosciutto in America. For Italian, they differentiate between prosciutto cotto (cooked deli ham that most Americans think of as ham0 and prosciutto crudo (cured ham-not cooked). The legs of ham were hung like bee hives all over this shop. I think Italians eat a lot of prosciutto. There's always someone standing in line buying prosciutto whenever I go to a grocery store.

Meredith ate some cured ham too! Boon Hong and I ate a lot of cured ham for two weeks. We could not bring it back to the US due the US custom regulations so we ate what can. Actually, we were planning to bring it back to the US but we had to finish the 1kg that we bought after we found out we cannot bring it back with us.

Colosseum

Colosseum. This is where the excesses, glory, brutality of the Roman empire were on full display. I think about 3,000 gladiators were forced to fight to their death as part of the opening celebration of the colosseum.

Meredith started wearing on her sunglass on the visit to Colosseum.

We mostly bought food to go from the various hot food stands around Rome. It is easier to picnic in the many squares in Rome since Meredith would not sit still when we eat in restaurant.

St. Peter Basillica-Vatican City

We spent one full day just to explore St Peter Basillica and Vatican City Museum. St. Peter Basillica has to be the most beatiful catholic church. It is amazing at about 5-6pm when the setting sun cast a beam of light through the dome. Coupled that with the choir singing and you can almost picture an ethereal heavenly atmosphere.

The frescos on the smaller dome in the St. Peter church.

We were very tired on the day we visited Vatican City. It was only the third day of our two weeks trip. The weather was hot and the line to enter Vatican City Museum was quite very long. You can tell Meredith is tired too. We eventually paid 40 euros to join a tour to be able to cut to the front of the line (it saved us about 1 hour waiting time). The tour guide (a young American guy from Lafayette, Louisiana who graduated from LSU) had several of his partners holding spots in the front of the line for his customers.

On quite a few occasions, Meredith would find the base of building columns (there are a lot of buildings with big columns in Italy) and then she would sit on the corner of the column and not want to move again. We carried Meredith most of the time since she refused to sit in the stroller but the hot weather and rigors of roadtripping still affects her. In this photo, Meredith had been sitting at this spot for about 10 minutes and she enjoyed people watching from her spot.

Fontana di Trevi

Fontana di Trevi is a beatiful barouque style fountain in Rome. The water is still supply by ancient Roman aquaduct. No road leads to the fountain directly and it is nestled in a small piazza. You hear the sound of water gushing before you see the fountain and then suddenly the fountain is directly in front of your eyes. The fountain is huge much bigger than the photo actually show.

Meredith was afraid of the water initially but she quickly warmed up and would not stop laughing as we let her dipped her hand in the water.

The small piazza where Fontana di Trevi is located is chokeful of tourists.

Hotel stay in Tuscany

Out of the many hotels we stayed in during our trip, we liked the one in Tuscany the most. It is located about 9km outside of Florence and closed to the Chianti wine region. The hotel is located on a very steep hill. I was debating whether we should rent a car for our Tuscany stay. I am glad that we did because the bus stop is at the bottom of the hill.

The view from our hotel room is classic Tuscany landscape with farmhouses and cypress trees.

Another view from the hotel. There are several ways to go up to the hotel. Some of the roads are very steep and narrow one lane road. I took the narrow one lane roads a few times just for kicks. Fortunately, I did not encounter any car going downhill on those narrow roads.

The restaurant attached to the hotel. The restaurant only opens when there is a tour bus carying a busload of tourist. I was poking around the first day wondering why all the tables are set but the restaurant is closed during normal dining hours.

Florence

We spent 4 days in Tuscany. Florence is the largest city in Tuscany and the renaissance started here. This a view of Florence taken from the hill near Michelangelo Piazza.

The weather was very hot when we were in Florence. Boon Hong bought Meredith a scarf to give her some shade. Meredith also points to her eyes when it gets too bright outside. That her way of saying she wants her sunglass. So, Meredith looked like Arabian baby all covered up with scarf and sunglass.

Now that we're back in Houston, Meredith starts saying "sai-sai" and requests for her sunglass as we drive around town.

Ponte Vecchio. A very charming bridge in Florence with lots of goldsmith shops. There used to be a lot of butcher shops on this bridge.

Convent in Rome

We stayed in a convent (Suore Elisabetta) near the central train station in Rome. It is a real convent run by a group of catholic nuns. The room is very simple, there's no TV in the room, but the room and the entire convent is extremely clean. The location is superb too, just 5 minutes walking distance from the train station and main bus stop. Everything in Europe is so expensive that a room in this convent costs about 85 euro. The view from the roof top of the convent is pretty nice as well. Most of the hotels in Italy including this convent provides breakfast with the stay. Every morning, the nuns served croissant, coffee (their coffee is good) in the breakfast room.

Meredith standing on the bed in the convent. She's holding a Lufthansa airline toy that the flight attendant gave her.
The cross in our room. The convent and actually the entire Rome has a lot of Christians and Catholics relics. When we stayed in convent, we can hear the church bell being rang at set interval. This makes me think of Kuching when I used to hear church bell rings at St. Joseph cathedral. Meredith reading the Italian prayer book in the convent. We tried to maintain a routine for her by reading her the same bedtime stories during this trip. We brought a few of her books with us. She can act out the simple motion in the stories book by now and she will perform those action automatically as I turn to right pages.
Breakfast room in the convent.

View from our room in the convent.

Italy Trip - Rome

We just came back from Italy yesterday. We went to Rome, Florence, Tuscany area, Venice and then spent several days in Luzern, Switzerland before flying back from Zurich. We were exhausted (physically and also moneywise) after this two weeks trip especially with a toddler but we really enjoyed it. I think we were being too ambitious when we planned the trip. All three of us learned a lot from this trip especially Meredith. Meredith learned about 20 new words during this trip (probably being stimulated by all the new things we encountered during trip and being around us 24 hours everday. I took a lot of pictures, so I will attempt to select a few pictures for each cities we visited. Here are some photos of Rome at night. Overall, Rome (and the Italy) is very charming but with some rough edges at the same time. In fact, the chaos in the street and level of cleanliness reminds me of Malaysia.

The Spainish Steps. This is where all the tourists came to sit and people watch. There are a lot of illegal peddlers hawking fake hand bags (Prada, Guccis etc...) and even cold beer all over Rome. We sat around at the Spainish steps for quite a while. Every 45 minutes or so, the police will come by and all the hawkers will roll up their mats displaying fake handbags and run away to the next street. Five minutes later, they all came back and unroll their mats on the same spot. The fake goods are not entirely cheap either. But business is good and a lot of American tourists have never been to Petaling street or Hong Kong, so they don't know how much good fake goods should costs. Law enforcement in Italy in this regard is pretty lax or sporadic. It's just like VCD hawkers and the police in Malaysia.
View of St. Peter Basilica from the top of Spainish Steps.

Meredith drinks from the fountain in Vatican city. A lot of water fountain in Rome are supplied from ancient Roman aquaducts and is safe for drinking.
The Pantheon. This is nice. It is a temple to worship all 30,000 of Roman Gods. "Pan_ theos" or all the gods. Worship them all under one roof.