Sunday, Sept. 8, 2013
Parma, Lucca, Pisa, Siena

Off we went in the morning, rather sad to leave Cremona.  With the help of Verizon we drove to Parma, in hopes of seeing something of Paganini.  No such luck.  There was some kind of marathon going on and almost all the streets except for the main thoroughfares were blocked off.  We only saw interesting street names like Donnezetti Street and Puccini Street.  No Paganini!  Can't win them all.  Anyway, this was going to be our busiest day so we marched on.  On to Lucca, the birth home of Puccini.  After a gelato and the toillete we walked through the city walls, across a big moat (no water now) and into the city -- a very old and charming city.  Like most of these cities, only special vehicles are allowed so there is a lot of walking to be done, in Puccini's footsteps.  We visited his birth home and saw much memorabilia, including original Ricordi scores of many of his works with his editing marks and a lot of his original hard written scores.  We didn't see his grave, but that's OK.  I'd rather think of him in living form!

It was just before dusk when we found a parking space close to Pisa and walked to the entrance to that walled city.  We turned the corner and........gasp!  I had NO IDEA it was all so enormous.  There it was, spread out in front of us.  A huge and gorgeous cathedral, a baptistery, and, of course, the leaning bell tower!  It was really beautiful -- much more so than I expected.  We were both VERY glad we got to see it in person so it's not just an icon for us any more.  The tower won't fall over now.  10 tons of earth were taken out in 2000-2002 to stabilize it.  But it started leaning as soon as it was built in 1173 when they got to the 3rd tier.  They tried to fix it but it just got worse, so I guess they just said "the hell with it" and finished it anyway!  It has slowly been leaning more ever since, until the final fix in 2002.

Our long day (the only one for this trip) ended with Sandy driving at night to Siena.  Thankfully we went right to our hotel with our navigation.  We were really tired, but glad we did what we did.  The Hotel Porta Romana was up in the Tuscan hills - no air conditioning, but a lovely breeze.  We were awakened in the night by a thunder shower, but went right back to sleep knowing we would be waking up in Siena.