The setting Tuscan sunToday we woke up around 6:20am and I was surprised to find myself still tired since I had gone to bed so early last night. But then again, yesterday was insanity. As of this morning, I had yet to start really feeling hungry again. I can't tell anymore unless my stomach growls. That airline food really screwed me up. Meals are now my least favorite part of the day--though the sitting part is nice. Yes, everyone certainly loves the sitting part.

In any case, we had breakfast, gave our luggage to Carlo, the bus driver, and hopped on the bus for a few hours. The countryside was nice and several shades of green and full of sheep, goats, cows, horses--y'know, the works. This much I can say: the Tuscan countryside is lovely. Didn't really have much of a chance to take pictures of it, though, unless they were through the bus windows and those never came out right. Oh well. I have more than enough pictures of Italy's greenery from later in the day. We also drove by the Mediterranean Sea. Very, very green, I have to say. I was excited about this for no real reason in particular. I guess I was just glad I got to see it. And listened to Voltaire as I was seeing it. In fact, that's just about all I did during the bus ride. There are a few songs of his that may forever remind me of the Tuscan countryside. ((A/N: I was right! There are some songs of his that will occasionally just take me right back to Italy.))

We stopped off in Grosseto first. It had a cathedral, this much I remember. The San Lorenzo Cathedral. By today, though, I'm kind of all cathedral'd out, so I don't have much to say about it. Except that I think this may've been the one in which I almost ate the stone flooring because of one of those reliefs carved into the floor of a dead person. Though for all I know that could've happened yesterday. Yes, actually, that's probably it. See? I'm already confusing my cathedrals! They're all just blurring together at this point and I can only really distinguish the big ones without going through my massive photo collection.

Well, we had lunch there in Grosseto while some folks went with Dr. White and Melissa to a museum. After yesterday, Sarah and I figured we'd opt out of that one. I had a few slices of pizza--with del peppers since it was the women next to us (and in our group, of course) who'd ordered it and I think they said "pepperoni" instead of whatever you're supposed to say to get what we consider pepperoni. I pulled the peppers off, though. Not quite that brave. In some magical way, we got out of paying for lunch yet again (we didn't have to pay yesterday either, I believe Melissa and the others took care of that).

'Tis Sarah's pregnant belly. Hoyes, the Professor causes the other group members to want to feed us for free. ((A/N: The "Professor" was my nickname for him at the time. At the time of writing he's approx. 7 months old and can be fawned over and admired in Sarah's blog.)) Well, anyway, that's where we sat and ate with Monica and her mom Louis. We all decided that, if we have time when we go back to Rome on Sunday, we'll all get a taxi and go to the Forum. This would be grand since that's one of the main sights I was hoping to see on this trip.
Mime! Haha, there were a few of these guys in Grosseto. I love mimes. :)

Afterwards, we all jumped back on the bus and scooted on over to Pisa, specifically the Piazza dei Miracoli, where, yes, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is located. Melissa ranted about how over-rated it was since there was so much beautiful art and architecture throughout Italy and yet one of the most famous of them all...is a huge flippin' mistake. Ironic, no? Well, the tower was neat and joyous, but I kind of forgot it was there after a certain point. See, since you have to make reservations for tickets to go into the tower months in advance due to the limited number of them they give out (they do this to ensure that there are never too many people in the tower so it doesn't, y'know, fall), we couldn't go in. But Vig got us all tickets to go inside the cathedral and the baptistry, so that's where all my attention was going. We didn't get to go into the graveyard beyond that big wall you can see in some of the pictures, but meh, the baptistry made up for that. It has the most amazing acoustics you'll likely ever hear. While we were in there, it dawned upon me that there was this incredibly eerie, beautiful whisteling noise emanating from every crevice of the structure. I started looking around for the source and realized that it was Melissa whistling. But, oh my God, you could hear it everywhere. And the tune she was whistling was so perfect and haunting. Admittedly, the baptistry isn't much to look at from the inside, but to hear someone humming, whistling, or singing in there is absolutely fantastic.

Technically, you're not supposed to do that, though. I believe Melissa was shushed many times, albeit, I believe that's when she was singing. Whoever was in there that was watching us and doing the shushing apparently didn't mind the whisteling, or at least I never heard them complain. After Sarah and I left--probably while we were in the duomo (cathedral)--Melissa apparently got kicked out. But while we were still there and up in the second story, a priest or somesuch who worked there came in below and started singing. I caught a video of it for the sound alone, though it hardly does it justice. You really have to be there.

Ignore the first 15 seconds or so. That's just Melissa being shushed. xD


((A/N: This blog entry is based on what is possibly one of the only complete entries in my original travel log. I didn't actually write very much that day when, say, compared with day 5, but it's a heckuvalot better than just going off of notes!))

Did I provide all of the albums in this entry? Hm, I'm not sure, so here's the album for the whole day: Grosseto and Lucca 3-18-08.