April 22
Pisa

Thanks largely to Kathy's patience, we made it to the train station in Chiusi and got on the train to Florence, where we changed to another train heading West toward the Ligurean Sea and the city of Pisa. We brought umbrellas with us just in case, but it turned out to be one of the most beautiful, warm, sunny days we've had here so far.

Pisa is mostly flat, with tourists walking in all directions, so our tested strategy of walking uphill and following the people failed us. Nevertheless, we eventually found Pisa's own Duomo group, which includes the famous cockeyed bell tower. Our first order of business, as is our custom, was to settle in for a long, luxurious lunch at an outdoor cafe by the Duomo and Tower. We were sorely tempted to go with the usual birra and pizza, but managed to resist the temptation and order something different. We ordered a carafe of the vino della casa rosso (red wine of the house) and an appetizer of pancetta and melon. Then we did the pasta course. Kathy got gnocchi (little potato dumplings) in a gorgonzola cream sauce, and I got pasta with pancetta. If we were real Italians, instead of pretend Texans, we would have followed the pasta with a second course of meat or fish, then a cheese course, and finished up with a glass of dessert wine and/or gelato. Instead of all that, we paid the bill and got out of there while we could still walk.

As you would expect, Pisa is a little touristier than, say, Pienza or Arezzo. The entrance fees for the cathedral, baptistry, tower, and various museums, were needlessly complex and expensive. We toured the baptistry and Duomo, but then found ourselves distracted by the luscious green, well-kempt lawn that surrounds the Duomo group. We found a spot directly beneath the precariously tilting bell tower, lay down in the grass, and fell fast asleep. When we woke from our siesta in the sun (possibly the best sleep we've had in Italy), we browsed the souvenir shops without buying a single crooked trinket of any kind, then found a gelato shop and got three scoops of the rich, frozen Italian ice -- limone, amaretto, and caffe flavors.

To get back to the train station in Pisa, we took a long, lazy stroll along the Arno River. We were still quick enough to catch an earlier train to Florence, which turned out to be a good thing. When we got to the big Stazzione Centrale in Firenza, there was much chaos. Boarding school students, thousands of them, filled the station and every available train to Roma, which were the very same trains we needed to be on in order to hop off at Chiusi. Our fast, express train (for which we had paid extra) was an hour late arriving in Florence. Being a little nervous that it would never show up, we instead jumped the next train to Rome, a local with six planned stops between Florence and Chiusi.

Since we had paid for an express, second-class ticket, Kathy thought that probably warranted a first class cabin on the slow train, so she snagged two of the six seats in one of the glassed-in areas reserved for the rich folk. But the train was completely full of students and commuters, so we rode on into the night sharing the cramped space with a male student with a laptop computer, a young, female Italian commuter, and a middle-aged Italian couple who seemed to know all the regular riders of the line. When they first got on, the wife was screaming into the cell phone, yelling at someone named Paula (Pah-ooh'-la) about how shitty men are and how nobody understands how much work she and Paula do everyday to make a comfortable home. Actually, I don't have a clue what she was saying to Paula in Italian, but from her tone, I bet that's pretty close. Anyway, the lady would not stop talking. Even when her husband made scissor motions with his fingers until she hung up the cell phone, she went on and on to him and everyone else in the little cabin. Kathy whispered to me her theory that the lady was on some weird Italian reality show where, if she ever stopped talking, she would lose. I was tired and feeling trapped, and someone there stank of cigarette smoke. I finally broke and said out loud, "Jeez lady, can you give it a rest!?" The student looked up briefly from his laptop, but no one understood English. The lady went on talking loudly and gesturing even louder until they finally reached their stop and got off.

The remainder of the trip was quieter and more pleasant with just Kathy, the laptop boy, and me remaining in the cabin. When we started getting close to home I looked at the map and wondered out loud whether the train would stop again before Chiusi. The student, in perfect English, said, "There is one more stop at Castelione del Lago, which is where I get off." I was suitably embarrassed, and even more so when the poor kid got off the train leaving just Kathy and me. That's when I realized the nasty smoke smell was coming from me! My sports jacket had been hanging all night in the smoke-filled living area of the villa. Oh well. Even a bad day in Tuscany is better than a good day at work.