Pizza in Pisa

Pisa was quite the adventure. The group was hungry upon disembarking from our quick little train from Florence, and so we stopped in the first nice-looking cafe we could find (ABe actually made the decision to enter based on the attractiveness of the furniture, which admittedly may not have been the best criteria on which to judge a food institution). We ended up having quite a bit of trouble with the waitress behind the counter, who seemed to speak no languages that we did. Being adventurous, I had determined to eat a sandwich displayed in the window of the bar, and I pointed at it and asked, "Che es?"

She stared at me as if I had just spoken in Wingdings, and I repeated myself, pointing again at the sandwich. At long last she shook her head and said, "I don't speak Spanish. Italian or English."

I suppose I was incorrect in using "es" rather than "e", but to my credit "que" and "che" are pronounced the same way, so I was only one letter off from the Italian phrase. I really thought she might have figured it out, but to avoid being difficult I simply asked what the sandwich was in English.

"Ham, cheese, mayonaise," she answered promptly.

You may know that I avoid mayonaise. I asked, "Do you have any with no mayonaise?"

The Wingdings look returned, and she responded, "What is mayonaise?"

This took me by surprise, as I assumed she had an understanding of the word she had introduced into the conversation. However, giving her the benefit of the doubt, I pointed again to the first sandwich and requested she inform me of its contents.

"Ham, cheese, mayonaise," she repeated.

"And are there any with no mayonaise?" I even made the "no" motion with my hands.

"What is mayonaise?"

We were all stunned and confused. Trying once more, I pointed to a different sandwich and simply asked, "Mayonaise?"

"No meat," she said.

I got the sandwich with the mayonaise and scraped the mayonaise off in clumps that decorated the side of my plate. MR took a picture. She and PK had pizza, which was obviously the way I should have gone, though there were several problems with their orders as well, even though MR, who knows Italian rather well, tried to converse with our waitress in what we assumed to be her native language. At this point, we are all relatively sure that the waitress came from a foreign country unknown to us and speaks a language not readily obvious to us.

The food fiasco aside, our trip was quite a success. I learned today that the leaning tower of Pisa was actually built as the bell tower for Pisa's cattedrale - the chapel of Santa Maria. PK, ABe, MR and I got tickets to see the Cathedral, Baptistry, Crypt, and museums, and spent a few hours wandering around and poking inside them, taking pictures with the tower in the background. MR found the experience of the religious green over-religious, especially combined with our prolonged wanderings about the religious structures of Siena yesterday, but I actually thought it was much more touristy and less religious (how many times can I use "religious" in one sentence?). Fueled by my candle escapades of yesterday, I rooted out the candle stand in Santa Maria, hoping to light one and sit peacefully in front of it, reflecting about life. These "candles", though, were plastic stems with lightbulbs on top that lit up when you plugged them into a board. This ruined the experience for me, and on the whole I was entirely less impressed by the cathedral than by its leaning bell tower.

Upon returning to Florence in the early evening, we discovered several Saturday markets still in full swing and walked through them slowly. We made our way past the glittering jewelry stores on Ponte Vecchio as the sun began to set and MR ended up with a painting for 6 Euros (it was initially going for 15, so I am going to begin attempt to emulate her haggling prowress). Supper was almost four hours in a small restaurant where we were joined by several others, and we stopped for gelato on our way back to the bus. We are meeting at 6:30am tomorrow (today, actually!) for a full-day wine tasting around Tuscany. Monday, it seems, will be much more restful than the weekend!

Bag update: someone called the Villa today and reported a scheduled drop-off time of 12 noon today. It was a private number and we have not heard from them since. Needless to say, the bag is not yet here. I have thought "maybe tomorrow" so many times in the past week that "Monday, Monday" has become permanently stuck in my head. Luckily, tomorrow is a day of rest of Catholic countries, so I can think "maybe Monday". It is admittedly not much better and does very little to rid my mind of the Mamas and Papas tune.