The beautiful Tuscan countryside from high up in San Gimignano, home of the World Champion gelato maker Sergio Dondoli's Gelateria di Piazza. A little more about that in another piece, but the real story is the ride of the trip.
If you visit Tuscany you want to go a little out of the way and visit that leaning tower in that famous town of...you guessed it, Pisa. We arrived at Pisa after 4pm and in October the sun goes down earlier than in summer so things were getting dark and photo ops were on about to go dark!
So I hurried to the area where everyone was trying to get that perfect shot of you holding the tower from falling the rest of the way and gaved it the old college try. Not so much. It looks like the young lady in the phot is trying to use her super powers to will the tower upright, however as you guessed her photo-buddy was angling for the exact...spot. Looks kinda nuts doesn't it.
Anyway, too exhausted to wander much further afield for photos we quick marched back to where we'd eventually reboard our tram and had a coffee while waiting for the ride back to our tour bus. I did pass up an opportunity to buy a Rolex from a vendor with a box of them for a very good price mainly because 1-I had to use the WC and knew I needed to hold on until I bought something at the cafe in order to have access and 2-a sucker I'm not. I was a little disappointed no one tried to sell me a selfie stick.
I recorded bits of video on our trip and my favorite clip happened as we were completing a long days tour of Tuscany. The tour was great, if not exhausting and we looked forward to our ride back to Firenza and a relaxing evening. Instead of heading to the tour bus our little 2 car tram train went on a cooks tour of Pisa. During the summer months it would have been a sweet little jaunt...in daylight. This time of year (late October) it was getting dark and all we could see were well lit storefronts through the opaque plastic windows around us. Any important buildings, churches or fountains we passed were dark, smeary blobs in the twilight. After approximately 10 minutes into the ride what started as a few titters eventually gave way to hysterical laughter as we were tossed about the cars like like rag dolls (I exagerate) on the world's bumpiest tour of the apparent rough streets of downtown Pisa. My battery was almost done, but I had to try and capture at least a part of that amusement park thrill ride. Our lovely guide who rode in the vehicle pulling our two little cars was totally unaware of the jostling and bouncing we were doing as she undauntedly pointed out sites we couldn't really see in the dark through frosted plastic windows and jostled eyeballs. It certainly woke us up for the ride back to Firenza. What happened after we got back is another story. (We can't be lost.)
(Apparently the file is too large for the blog so here is the video address for YouTube. I wasted time trying to load it here. Enjoy.
https://youtu.be/kQ3IKcRTUAw
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