Milan by train.

Milan. Expensive. Busy. Rode the subway here. The Duomo in this town was unbelievable!!

Favorite story: we sat down in a little cafe. We were hot and tired and hungry. We shared a cold...well, the best I could describe would be it was shped like a pizza but it had a paper thin crust with a bit of cheese, some tomatoes and some green things on top. Cost us 24 euros. (that's close to $40) Oh my. After that we found a local grocery story and bought ourselves some bread, cheese and salami. Much cheaper. More satisfying. Glad we only stayed a day, though we missed signing up to see a re-enactment of the Last Supper.

Lucca

One of the best things we did was to take a half hour train ride to the little town of Lucca. It's famous for its olives, olive oil, and ceramics. The town still has the old Roman wall all the way around. The top of that wall is wide enough for chariots to go around it 3 or 4 wide! It has a wonderful shopping area, a huge shady plaza with Sycamore trees, a carousel, horse drawn buggies and lots of shops to rent bikes. That's what we did, rented a bike and rode around the whole town. We passed lots of walkers, families, other bikers, men playing dominoes, workers, and just people lolling about on work day afternoon. The day was perfect, and the whole way was lined with trees. This had to be one of my most favorite memories of this trip. Everything that I would have pictured ahead of time was all right here!

Pisa

I had to pinch myself when we first walked into the piazza that held that famous leaning tower. It really looked like all the pictures I've ever seen!! Beautiful marble from the 12th or 13th century. Wow! We could have gone to the top of the tower but it would have cost 12 euros and that was waaay to much. So we opted to see the cathedral and the baptistry. There was something I'd never imagined= the most amazing pulpit. It was at least 12 feet high so the preacher would have towered over his congregants. The pulpit itself had these carved marble panels all around that depicted the life of Christ from his birth to his death. Actually they were centered more on his early years and then one panel of his death and one of his resurrection. This whole thing sat on lions. It was really the coolest thing! There was so much detail. How did they do that?

Florence

We spent four days in Florence. Believe me, I can find four days worth of pictures to share with you! It was a wonderful city, and very beautiful. Here is just a sample of some of the things we saw!