When in Florence...Day 7 in Italy

So....the one thing about Europe--the hotels aren't really great at masking sound.  I sleep with earplugs anyway, but poor Jordan was up most of Wednesday night due to a lady having a multi-hour breakdown above us.  Based on what he heard, some VERY disturbing things can happen to you when you are drunk.  Another reason I am glad that I don't.  :)

Anyway, we got up the next morning to a DELICIOUS breakfast and decided to head to both the Mercato Centrale (where all the locals get their groceries fresh) and the famous San Lorenzo market, the one with all the leather :)  Warning:  some of these pictures can get a little graphic if you have a sensitive stomach when it comes to strange food.

Beautiful!!

Cheese.................... :)

Mountains of Mushrooms!!!

Can you guess?

Yep.  It's what you think it is.

We did some shopping for souvenirs in both markets--I got a beautiful scarf and Jordan a wonderful tie.

We ate lunch and stopped by the hotel to drop off our purchases and then got on a bus to PISA!!  Yep, we had booked a half-day tour to see the Leaning Tower.  Again, beautiful Tuscan countryside awaited us.

Peek-a-boo!!

The Campo dei Miracoli, or Field of Miracles

The Largest Baptistry in Italy at 180 feet tall.

 Interestingly, our tour guide gave us some information about this extremely old baptistry--in the very early days of Catholicism.  He said, that curiously, back then, Catholics didn't baptize babies, but "young lads," and that they weren't sprinkled, but fully immersed.  Then they were walked into the neighboring cathedral to be confirmed.  Hmmm.  Curious, indeed :)

Inside the Cathedral, also called the Duomo, designed by Giovanni Pisano.  The inside suffered a fire long ago, but has been restored.   Its nave (320 ft) was the longest one in Christendom when it was built in 1063.

Beautiful, gold-gilded ceiling.

This pulpit has four hundred intricately carved figures, by Pisano.  The female figures in the center represent Faith, Hope and Charity.

The beautiful painting on the inside of the dome.

This is the mummified body of Pisa's patron saint, St. Ranieri.

After our tour of the cathedral, we had another half hour to wander the field, eat gelato, see the Camposanto Cemetery (unfortunately, no pics), and of course, take some very silly pictures :)

By the way, that's my pretty scarf, but you can't really see the pretty part :)

Afterwards, we took the hour and a half bus ride back to Florence, where we found a great self-service cafeteria called Ristorante Leonardo.  It was cafeteria style.  Actually, some really delicious pasta and great panna cotta.  Who says good food can't be cheap?  :)

One day left.