Presentation and Piza

On Thursday I gave my presentation. I had technical difficulties and my presentation froze unexpectedly which was unfortunate. But I was able to recover. After lunch I had agreed that I would go with one of my german conference friends to visit Pisa and the leaning tower. I was really glad to go. On our way we met up with another colleague from the conference, a Professor from Michigan, and we decided to all go together. We took the bus from Volterra to Pontadera which took more than an hour. Along the way I spotted a cycling tour, it was very interesting to see how popular cycling is. It was nice to see that taking the train to Pisa from Pontadera was easy, however, I can imagine that when there are lots of people being a tourist and not knowing where to go can be hard. When we got to Pisa we walked around the Piazza del Duomo. It was full of people but it was still very nice to see the leaning tower and the Duomo. After an hour or so we decided to walk to the Piazza dei Cavalieri and then onto the Piazza Mazzini, where we had a nice surprise. There is a small church of San Mateo, where as soon as you walk in you are greeted by a 3 dimensional fresco on the cieling which takes your breath away. Its rather alarming because the outside of the building doesn't seem very impressive so you wouldn't think such amazing paintings are inside. After visiting the church we continued walking toward the train station. The rio Arno was nice to cross over. Parts of Pisa seem a little run down and it is full of pedestrians. Before bording the train we had some okay Pizza which was not too memorable. By the time we reached Volterra it was 10:30 pm. The walk back in the dark to the conference site was one of the highlights of the day. It was so nice to be walking in the countryside.