Hotel Grande Bretagne Montecatini Terme

... on the "uphill" side as ballast.
This gives the tower a slight 'banana" shape.
An attempt was made in 1836 to dig out the foundation, yet lean worsened.
It was closed in 1990 to visitors as collapse was thought imminent. Tower then nearly 18'-6" off.
Stabilization work was begun in 2000 which brought the tower back toward plum by 11".
Re-opened to tourists in 2001 in groups of 30, attended by a guide only.

Pisa

woke up to pouring rain again so lucky we had a good look at the views the afternoon before… but made a tricky drive down in rain then onto Autostade.. Very fast but pouring rain to start with… finned up as we neared the coast… made it to Pisa… drove in traffic and down one way streets.. Mainly the right way we ...

... B we had booked… it was a restored castle on top of the hills in Tuscany… after much winding roads on what appeared to be a single road to nowhere we found it and it was worth the effort…..we sat on to of the hill looking at olive groves and the hills beyond.. Magnificent…. Dinner was a Florentine steak.. Yes just one steak between 4 of us.. The biggest T-bone in the world… amazingly tender .. View from top of mountain great….

... it could jump off my plate at any moment… I had a bit of trouble de-boning the thing, but an Australian girl with much more fish eating experience helped me out.

On my only full day, I did the five town hike with two people from my hostel. The weather was not entirely cooperative, cloudy with a bit of rain. But the scenery was still amazing, colourful towns built into the cliffside, separated by ...

... room with free breakfast (eggs!) and dinner (pasta or pizza, naturally) made for some serious socialization and some interesting folks.

We confirmed the best gelato in the world claim made by the Trinity Gelato shop... twice. Mascarpone and Chocolate being the ultimate flavours, we saw the David by Michealangelo and found it a unique experience as compared to everything we had seen up to that point. There was a fascinating photo exhibit set up temporarily at the ...

... nearly as much as coming from it earlier today. We got back to the hotel in time for us to head straight to dinner (except dad, who squeezed in a shower and got dressed up just to make us look bad, the *******), which was made up a pasta with speck and red sauce and a chicken breast with cheese and ham. Tasty, tasty. After dinner, I headed downstairs to watch the Russia-Spain semi-final game in the European Championship. During the game, I tried to catch up on about five days of missed ...

... finally got back to CAPA and they got us a cab to our apartment. It is friggin awesome. Once again, pictures to come. After showering, we met up with everyone at 7 in front of the Duomo. We went to dinner, walked back to the apartment for some wine, then went to bed. 3. Woke up this morning to the sun in my eyes. My bed is right next to the window, and I wanted to try it out with my head next to the outside wall first to see how much the noise outside would bother me. Got to ...

... it's funny because our school field trips were to the San Jose Tech Museum or Sacramento to see the capital of California. school field trips for kids in Italy include trips to Florence to see the statue of David. inside the museum we saw lots of cool painting, tons of sculptures, and they had a whole exhibit on old musical instruments made of ivory, marble, rare wood, and decorated with mother of pearl, tortoise ...

... made it in no time. Our hotel was smack dab in the center of the city. So sweet, and so unlike Contiki. We had to park the bus illegally to a couple blocks away, unload the suitcases and go to the hotel. Basically, once you get your suitcsase, start walking. I felt bad for Dana, half fdragging half wheeling her broken suitcase. Fortunatly, even though we got to the hotel early, we were able to check in. About 10 mins later, we were back ...

... me it was some sort of military demo or something to that effect in Italian. So as I had about an hour, I decided just to hang around in the square and people watch. Now St. Mark's is definetely the place to people watch. There are a couple of little stands with guys selling bird feed for €1 and you can never fail to find someone feeding the pigeons whenever you get there. Today was particularly amusing. There must be a good 500-1000 permanent pigeon residents in ...