Knock knock. Who’s there? Leaning. Leaning Who? The Freaking Leaning Tower Baby!

This past weekend in my homeland J, I traveled on Saturday to Pisa and a nearby neighbor, Lucca.

We—Catherine, Morgan, Jordan, and yours truly—boarded the train at 6.15 in the AM. After a four hour trip, we arrived at the home of a tower that is leaning, known as “The Leaning Tower”.

It was so cool! We all know what the Leaning Tower is, but, wow, that mother really leans big time. Pictures do not really capture the great lean of the Leaning Tower. To be honest, it’s incredible that it’s still standing.

The Leaning Tower happens to be by a great and beautiful Cathedral, complete with a Baptistry. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to enter into either. But their placement was a sure memory. In total—the Tower, the Cathedral, and the Baptistry—it was a very beautiful sight. I loved it particularly at night. For some reason, in the moon light, the place shone in a touching and spiritual way. Loved it.

After we ventured a couple of hours to find the Tower, we decided to eat our packed sandwiches. During this time, I coined a memorable phrase. Apparently, Italian, and specifically Pisan, pigeons have no fear of humans—complemented with a deep love for food. The whole time while we ate our food there were pigeons around us. Almost consistently you had to shove them with your feet to have some pigeon free time. I kicked one quite hard in the tail-butt, actually. Those pigeons really stirred my anger. “You want some more?!” I yelled multiple times. My memorable phrase came at this point. But due to the PG rated content of this site, I’m going to have to conceal its content.

Up= Cathedral. Down = Baptistry and Very Pretty Man

Down= The tower almost fell on Very Pretty one.

On the bus to Lucca—a quick 30 minute drive—we passed through, obviously, the beautiful Tuscan countryside. In Lucca, a small, quintessential kind of Italian town, we walked around: shopped, went into a couple of churches, walked for a bit around the border of the wall (I think it was medieval—maybe ancient?), and enjoyed our few hours in the town. Coming back to Pisa, we got some more pictures and headed home on the train.

Up= "I am the King of Lucca! Fear not the bull anymore, my fellow citizens." Thomas the Great shown in his defeated pose after slaying the terrifying bull-monster.

Up= Wall surrounding Lucca

Now, I suppose, since I have been lazy with posts, that I should write just a bit about this week in Roma. Sunday: I went to a Broccoli festival! I freaking love Italy so much. It was in a small, town by the water about an hour north of Rome. “Prendo il pasto completo per favore!”, I enthusiastically ordered my full plate of food: broccoli, pasta, sausage, wine, bread, and water. I dug in like a dog. It was, to my mouth, like a pen is to paper. It just worked well together. J Yummy.

Monday: went to Trastevere (I may have mis-spelled that), a part of Rome, with Catherine and enjoyed some delectable gelato. Then we ventured into the Jewish Ghetto—very neat. Many of the restaurants had “Kosher” in front of their name. I prefer not kosher food. Hehe. Supposedly there’s a restaurant in the neighborhood that serves authentically Roman food. Not Italian. Roman. Whatever that means…but I heard it’s really good, so I’m taking Catherina there for her birthday dinner. We also managed to venture into a basilica that was build over Roman pagan temples! Not just that, we walked underneath the church through the ruins: it was so neat to experience and see not only the history there, but also to see the historical development. I loved it. At one spot, there were even some human bones!

Wednesday (today!): I had Art in Rome, my on-site art history class. I love the class and the professor. Today we went to three basilicas: Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Prassede, and Santa Prudenziana. All three were awesome. The first one, as soon as I walked into it, I was blown away. I was mesmerized in class today learning about the different symbolisms used in early Christian art, and the liturgical and architectural developments. I want to share one piece of information with you: the early Christian churches were derived and developed from the Roman basilica. The main part of the interior space, where the congregation assembled, was called the “nave”, which comes from the Latin word “navis”, the word for ship. Thus, it was clear that participating in the Divine Liturgy (that is, the Eucharist) was to board a ship into salvation, into heaven, into the Divine presence. The Liturgy is not unlike a vassal, a mystical transport into the realm of God, who has been brought to us by Jesus Christ.

This upcoming weekend: Carnivale in Venencia!

Pax et bonum!