July 3 - Pisa

Luckily our house in FdM has a king-sized bed (or at least the European equivalent) because everyone took a turn in our bed last night - at one point- 4 of the 5 of us were in there!  It's hard for the kids sleeping in new places and there are plenty of new sounds to get used to here.  I suspect that the weekend nights will be even more lively than the Wednesday and Thursday nights we've spent already. There seems to be a lot of action on the street outside our window at all hours! 

Sunburned and mosquito bitten, we set off this morning for the iconic Italian landmark, the leaning Tower of Pisa!  Pisa is an easy 40 minute drive from FdM and we have AC in the Fiat so we figured that today was as good a day as any to check this one off the list!  We arrived in Pisa at around 12:00 and it was packed - tour busses aplenty!  Jack knew to go straight to the ticket counter and get a timed entry ticket - then we wandered around the cathedral, souvenir shop and grabbed some lunch.  The ticket was for a 2:15 pm entry to climb the 275 steps to the top of the tower.  No kids under 8 so Jack and Jacqui made the trek for us all and came down with the pictures to prove it.  If we didn't have an extra day where we felt we needed to get out of the sun, I'm not sure I would have dedicated a day to this side trip but as it was, I'm glad we did it. Jacqui was extra proud of herself because she recovered from an upset stomach to climb to the top!

Once we got some groceries and got home, the younger girls engaged in an epic water fight.  Both girls had a high capacity squirt gun so it was pretty much mutually assured saturation!  They had a ball, soaking each other for over an hour!

Meanwhile, Jack took the bike out and rode south along the coast for about 6 miles to Viariggio - the party town!  Much flashier than our quiet little FdM - I'm so glad we are here!!

We ate dinner at home tonight and set off at around 6:00 under a threatening sky.  The rumble of thunder in the distance fortold the coming summer storm so we stopped at the fair first to ensure we would not have a mutiny if it was rained out later.  That turned out to be a good call!  We headed back to Principe for our aperitivo and sat down just in time to watch the deluge!  The girls are not used to thunder storms and enjoyed the drama of it all.  Instead of going to dinner, we grabbed foccachinis and gelacho for dinner and wandered home slowly through the soggy streets - nothing beats the smell after a summer storm.