Mark says: The next morning we headed off to Pisa after another disappointing breakfast, not even bread or toast to apply our Vegemite to.
The drive to Pisa was along a nice country road, we could tell when we arrived in Pisa though because all of sudden there was a traffic jam. We crawled along for a few hundred metres and found a car park. As it turned out Pisa is the leaning tower and the leaning tower is Pisa.
It is co-located with a cathedral and baptistry in a rectangular ‘green’ space enclosed by an old (roman?) wall, and more religious / museum facilities. All of the space around the buildings has been devoted to well manicured green grass, but you’re not really allowed to walk on it – just look at it instead. It was a lovely setting, the green grass helped highlight the white of the buildings.
However it’s the leaning tower that really does it for us tourists. Stylistically it’s a pretty innocuous tower compared to other monuments we have seen in Italy, even in Lucca the day before. If it weren’t for the lean, I’m sure we would not have even visited Pisa.
Anyway, like every other tourist there, we practiced holding the tower up and then pushing it over for our photos. We did this from a range of different perspectives whilst trying to find the best location to push the tower over.
It was good to get up really close to the tower to see the entire (paved) area around the tower leaning with it. It really drove home the weight of these objects, how fragile they can be, and how ‘precious’ they are to humans.
After wandering around photographing the area for a while and buying Michelle’s obligatory fridge magnet we took off for Florence. We had been looking forward to Florence from the moment we left Spain, so we were keen to get there and settle in. The drive took a little over an hour and fortunately the sat nav took us to our accommodation via an easy route, now that’s rare and appreciated!
Michelle says: The drive into Florence itself could be described as either exhilarating, or downright bloody scary. I lean towards the latter but kept trying to tell myself it was the former. Three lanes become one, without any warning at all, and every car has the right of way, all at once. And then half a dozen bikes weave their way through the whol e mess, just because they can. But, we made it to Florence, and we’re both very excited about that.
Our hotel is an apartment really, so that we can cook a little. So while Mark headed off downstairs to the laundry room, I put a saucepan of water on to make a cup of tea. I turned on my computer, started to write, did some facebook stuff, looked up this, looked up that, blah blah. Time passed… and I wondered what the peculiar smell was… this is the first thing I have cooked since we left in July and I burnt the water!!! I completely boiled the saucepan dry. How embarrassing!
An hour or so later, laundry done and cup of tea made while carefully watching the stove, we walked down the road and hit the supermarket for things to cook for breakfast. It’s kind of fun being in a supermarket in a foreign country – we’ve learnt that you put on plastic gloves to choose your fruit, and that you have to weigh and tag it yourself before taking it to the checkout. We’ve also learnt that supermarkets are a great way to pick up cheap red wine! Some bread, some eggs, butter (which tastes very strange here and is almost white in colour) and sugar – and we were all set for the morning.
We headed out into Florence for a little walk and the search for dinner (I was traumatized by the boiling water, so we decided we weren’t cooking that night)! We caught a bus into the city, again after much map pointing and smiling and nodding with a bus driver who spoke no English – and we jumped off just near Ponte Vecchio, on the side of the river opposite the Uffizi (so the really old side of Florence). We spent a little time gazing at the bridge and watching Florence pass by on the other side. Some strange guy with Tourrettes syndrome passed us by, and we decided that may be the sign to get moving again.
We wandered the streets of Oltrarno: narrow streets with small homes, quiet squares and shops selling antiques and artisan crafts. We came across a very cool little fountain, which obviously used to (and probably still does) supply the community with water. Our book tells us it was designed by Buontalenti in the 16th century. We walked past lots of three story buildings that were all obviously very old – and because it was nighttime and still warm, people had their windows open and when you looked up, you could see fabulously painted ceilings inside the apartments. We walked past the Palazzo Pitti with its enormous forecourt, and did lots of window shopping, gawking at all the leather bags and shoes.
We wandered into the centre of some buildings and found a little restaurant for dinner – spag bol and veal cutlets were downed with gusto, as was some local red wine. We wandered across the Ponte Vecchio and admired the river from halfway across – all the stores were closed, and covered in little wooden shutters, it was quite different to the bustling Ponte Vechhio of a few hours earlier. We found a taxi rank and caught a cab back to the apartment, and crashed out – dreaming of getting the task of boiling water right in the morning.
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