We had a long drive from Venice to Pisa but nutella spread and two auto grille stops sustained us. When we arrived in Piza we were again surrounded by the "Hi Lady" persistent vendors and some incredibly obvious gypsy women. They do distract from the beauty of the place, but . . .
Can you imagine Stanley Park with 'vendors' approaching every person getting out of a car or bus with handfuls of Lion's Gate Bridge trinkets and fake totem poles? OK, enough of my rant.
We started our tour with our local guide Ricardo. Our first stop was the baptistry. In the early days of the church, people could not enter the church without being baptized; they could not even enter the church to be baptized! The baptismal font was in a separate building. Originally this building had an open top, or oculus, that permitted rain water to fall through the roof into the font. After seveal years, the people realized that with a good rain, the baptistry flooded and they got good things like Mosquitoes populating the place. They filled in the hole and placed a statue of St. John the Baptist on top and, lo and behold, the whole baptistry turned into an echo chamber! Inside the baptistry there is a wonderful pulpit designed by Niccolo Pisano (or his Papa) with 7 pillars and 3 lions. The pillars represent all those 7s we read Bout in the Bible and the Lions represent the Holy Trinity.
We walked from there to the basilica and saw another pulpit; this one designed by the other Pisano. I will have to lookmupmthe details.
More later . . . We are loading the coach for Rome!
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