Crooked towers, straight-laced galleries and curving roads

After the Cinque Terra we moved along to Pisa, made famous by its hordes of tourists and vendors selling souvenir junk. Wait, that’s not right, it’s famous for its failure of geological engineering! I actually found it more amazing that the tower hadn’t fallen over, than the fact that it was leaning at all. More interesting than the tower were all the people either pretending to hold it up or push it over. Very original. Pisa wasn’t a total failure though; we ate some pretty tasty lasagne and drank some nice wine.
After Pisa we took the train to Florence. Florence is famous for having the highest concentration of religious art in the world. Probably. We saw all of the musts; we met David at the academy, we saw the birth of Venus (aka naked chick riding a clam shell) in the Uffizzi, and admired some of what the Italians call ‘modern’ art (17th-19th century) in the Pitti palace. We also went to the best of the museums: the Science museum. That’s how we roll. Any idea what an astrolabe is? Neither do I, but those crafty old bastards from the 16th century sure did.
Because we have been eating a lot of gelato in Florence and our attention span has shortened accordingly with the amount of sugar, we needed a break from all the learning. We accomplished this with a couple of daytrips, the first to Sienna, and the second to Fiesole. In Sienna we received a little bit of a surprise. That day happened to be a portion of the Mille Miglia, a thousand mile, thousand car marathon of mechanical glory. We watched the seemingly endless parade of expensive or antique cars drive by over wine and pasta, from less than 5 feet away. I thought there were more cars than you could shake a stick at, until my father managed to wave his flag at every single one. Our second daytrip was to Fiesole, or Fiasolanum, if you happen to be a Roman. We went and toured around the restored amphitheatre and Etruscan ruins and the local archaeological museum (staffed by an amusing British curator who gave us a personal tour [we were his only visitors]). Fiesole has an enviable view of Florence, being perched on top of a nearby hill.