BOX 234: Pisa, Volterra, Siena, Sheboygan.

Pisa Cathedral is a stunning work of architecture, dating from the 11th Century, with the façade completed in the early 1100s. It was built as a rival to the contemporaneous St Mark's in Venice (its Wikipedia entry tells me) in a mix of Classical, Northern Italian, Byzantine and Islamic styles, and it's all the more striking for being built on an open plain at the edge of the medieval town rather than right in the center of it. Already unique, the Cathedral looks a little weird as well because of its bell tower (campanile) leaning at a disturbing angle.

Anne and I, along with 78 others from Sheboygan, were visiting Pisa on the first leg of an all-day bus tour from Siena. The plan was to visit three Tuscan hill towns on our way back to Siena, though we ended up getting to only two. This was just one day of our 9-day UW-Sheboygan campus trip, based in Siena, in January 2002. See my previous two posts for our visits to Florence and Rome as well as times spent wandering around Siena.

The Piazza del Duomo contains a third magnificent structure, built a little later than the church and belltower: the Baptistery:

I took one other photo of the Baptistery, with the Cathedral in shadow on the far left and walls at the edge of the piazza to the right:

I also tried to photograph the interior of the Cathedral, but as usual my focus was less than sharp:

More satisfactory are the pics I took of the Leaning Tower:

I see that I have one photo of some of our group during the Pisa visit--sitting outside the apse of the Cathedral, I think. That's Macrae Husting on the left and Lee and Judy Marquardt on the right, plus pigeons and a local cat.

After we lunched in Pisa our bus took us to Volterra, usually listed as a "hill" town though it's built on something closer to a mountain. Here are a couple of quick glimpses of the skyline as our bus approached the winding road that would take us to the top:

The views from the city ramparts of the valley below were striking, even during a misty sunset:

My photos of the town itself have a bluish tint from the waning afternoon light. Here to the left is the Palace of the Priors, now the City Hall, with various members of our group circling about--it's easiest to recognize Linda Reiss in the yellow coat.

Here from more of a side angle is the City Hall again, now with its tower visible:

We walked to the Cathedral, built in the 1100s:

Near it is this equally ancient Baptistery:

I'm not sure why we were running late--you might just say, "It's Italy," where you should expect things won't always be on time. By the time our buses arrived at our second hill town, San Gimignano, it was quite dark, though floodlights made the famous medieval towers still worth visiting. I took no photos, but I'd gotten a few good ones when I visited the town with Max, Wayne and our other friends in 1983 (see BOX 144). We didn't go to the final town on our tour at all but returned directly to Siena.

I remember it snowing that night when Anne and I came out of our restaurant, probably close to 11 pm--the flakes coming down through the canyon-like alleyways of Siena. The next day from our hotel window we could see snow on the Tuscan landscape:

Wednesday was our last full day in Siena. That evening we had an end-of-trip party/dinner at the hotel, where I took a few photos of group members. Here is Grace Zangara, showing off a purchase; she's joined in the second photo by Helen Casper, with Laura Guenther looking up from the couch:

One bad photo has mostly people's backs, but I'll include it in case anyone from the trip can recognize him/herself. A second bad photo shows Mark Koelpin, who bought an Armani suit on the first day of our trip--after the fitting it was ready in time for our party; the suit looked great, but I didn't get the right light and framing:

Finally, here are some folks at dinner: Roberta Filicky-Peneski and Rick Reiss in the foreground (with Linda cut off on the right), Anne in a rose-colored outfit, and Erica Strauss and her mother, Pat, farther back.

We had to be up crazy-early the next morning for a 4 am bus departure to Pisa Airport for a 6:55 flight to Milan. I was a nervous wreck by the time the buses from Pisa arrived late due to icy roads, but we did manage to catch our flight, and to get on the Milan-O'Hare flight without a problem. Still, this was the only 80-person trip we ever wanted to attempt--it was back to 40+ on one bus thenceforth.

Since this hasn't been a very long post, I'll include pics I took at home between mid-January and mid-March, using up the slide roll. First after the trip is a shot of a fantastic-looking matzo ball soup that Anne made:

Then there are lots of photos of our grandson Forest, born the previous June. His brother, Sam, who was featured prominently in previous BOXES, shows up as well, along with Aron teaching his sons a valuable skill:

The last photo on the roll must be from my birthday in March. I'm not sure what the casserole is, but I can tell you that the beautiful wine glasses (their special box is on the counter in the back) were a present from Siena from Jason and Nikki, the students who went with us on our walk through Rome and to the wine-tasting in Siena (see previous BOXES).

The next summer we planned to go to Hawai'i for our sixth biennial visit, this time organizing a campus tour that tied in with a course on Hawai'i literature and culture I was going to teach. I'll show slides from that trip in my next posts.