Italy Vacation - Part 4 Pisa & Ferrari

So we bailed out of Roma and headed up the coast to Pisa.  Rome gave way to country side very quickly and we had better views of the Mediterranean Sea.  It was good to be out in the country, but bad for finding breakfast.

We made it into Pisa and really felt like tourists now.  Accosted by watch salesmen and everyone else wanting to make a few Euros from us.  The Tower was okay - the better part was watching everyone else take a photo of the tower.  It was good to go there once.

We then took the long drive up to Maranello to see the Ferrari factory.  This was the worst drive of the trip as the views weren't nice and the traffic was bad.  We made it to the Ferrari factory around 4 and paid the over priced entrance fee to the museum.  We took a look around and let the boys play on everything they could.  We then checked into the hotel where the Ferrari technicians stay when the come to town for training before they go work at some dealership somewhere.  This was rather cool - the best rooms of our trip and reasonably priced even with wifi and breakfast.  It was great to stay in a western style hotel for a change.  We scouted around town after checking in and went to the local grocery to stock up on wine and cheese.  Brian nursed a giant chunk of parmesan from that grocery for a month until it was gone.  We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner and had a good meal including the "Farmer's Fried Plate" for my Dad.  It included a multiple meats, but also fried custard, fried pear and fried strawberry.  It was fantastic.

We then hit the road home.  We took the long way back as we wanted to see the mountains so we went by Lake Garda (foggy) and Innsbruck (snowy)....and never really saw the mountains until we were near Salzburg.  We got off the motorway there to grab lunch as Brian was still preaching about Curry Wurst and he wanted to share it with us.  We ended up finding a roadside Wurst stand in a warehouse parking lot that was run by a nice old Austrian couple who were surprised to have some toursits in.  The special was wurst, covered in a mound of chopped onions, jalapenos, mayo, mustard, ketchup and curry powder.  It has been and will be Brian's preferred European meal.  We even had to save that warehouse parking lot as a favorite on our GPS so we could make it back there.

Long drive back to Bratislava, but it was good to be home for some laundry and hot chocolate.  Great week in Italy.