Time to play catch-up

We left our rental outside of Rome on Saturday morning and headed to Assisi, famous for it's hometown boy, St. Francis. What a beautiful town! Like nothing we have ever seen before - picture perfect around every corner with amazing views of the valley below from it's walls. We all said we would love to return with Bryan!

Street in Assisi






On Assisi's wall

After spending a few hours and having lunch, we headed to our destination: Gambassi Terme, about an hour outside of Florence and Siena. Our house sits on a hill surrounded by a vineyard and olive trees. It is a rental property managed by a company, rather than an apartment in the home of our landlord. It looks like there are several houses up here and other renters like us. We have met a young couple from Germany and there is a family from Denmark staying upstairs. We are only a few minutes from a good size town named Castelifiorentino. We can see the remains of a ruined castle on a nearby hill - I hope we have time to explore!

The castle near our house

View from our house

view from our house

Daisy had to warm up to our tandem bike!

Today is Sunday, and just like the other towns we have visited, just about everything is closed. We headed to Lucca, a lovely little town where the first bishop was a disciple of St. Peter. What makes this town appealing is it's 2000 year old Renaissance wall stretching about 2 1/2 miles around the city. It is a lovely public walkway with parks, gardens and benches - the perfect place for a Sunday afternoon bike ride!

The "Field of Miracles" in Pisa

yep, it's leaning...

After our ride and gelato, we headed for Pisa. We headed straight for the "Field of Miracles", and the Leaning Tower itself. There are several architectural marvels among the buildings in this square, so we spent some time admiring the delicate columns, gables and spires. Then we snapped a few shots, the kids bought a few mementos and we were outta there! It was packed with tour bus groups - too crowded for us!
Tomorrow we head to Siena and then on Tuesday we plan to visit Florence.

St. Francis