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Pisa, Italy

Travelling to Pisa takes you from the Ligurian region into Tuscany. We took the train for a reasonable €8.50 each with one station change.. The total journey was about 1.20 hrs passing through lots of small towns including Carrara which is where they carve the marble out of the hills, and the place where Leonardo da Vinci sourced his raw materials. From our window in the train we saw a number of yards stacked with massive slabs and sheets in wonderful pinks, whites, blacks and greens.

The countryside is nice and green punctuated with a few rivers and older style homes with small tidy garden plots planted with olive and lemon trees. All this scenery has a background of high hills or mountain ranges. There is also quite a bit of shabbiness in towns and the rural areas, and a strange lack of livestock. This was the same in Spain; virtually no sheep, cows or goats – we have probably seen no more than 30 animals total! However, there was one field of horses near Pisa.

Pisa city was rich and powerful around 1100 and this is when the Field of Miracles was built. It has its own Romanesque style and would have been quite a statement in its day, however as a modern city it did not overly excite us. Instead of talking a bus from Pisa to the Field of Miracles we extended our adventure by walking approximately 40 mins though the town which is intersected by a river with several bridges. For a moment it made us think of Amsterdam but nowhere near as pretty, tidy or clean.

We required refuelling by this time so found a nice tea house cafe where we selected savoury and sweet from two different sides of the shop and sat inside (which is cheaper than outside). It tasted as wonderful as it looked; a creamy club for Vernon with ham and a French bread with salmon, caviar, egg, asparagus and bernaise covered in a jelly glaze for me, a chocolate and pine nut torte, and a custard filled pastry to share.

When I got the bill it seemed a bit cheap, so I checked it and found it was missing our savoury, so after communicating this they came back with a revised one. Shock it was more than expected, so I queried that and found apparently if we had eaten the savoury at the bar, not at table I would have saved 3.50 euro. There was no price difference where we ate the sweeties and drunk our coffee. Go figure? It still only worked out at 10 euro each, including coffee for very tasty, quality, but not over filling lunch. Live and learn LOL.

We carried on towards the tower taking one wrong turn around the old town wall but it was a scenic route. When we did spot the tower (as shown in the photo from street view) we were delighted at how much of a lean it had, in fact so much so I wondered apprehensively if it might be the day it topples with me on route to the top? The three buildings also shone so brightly with their ornate marble exteriors amongst the tan and terracotta of Pisa buildings it was quite a sight.

One observation that may seem racist, so apologies in advance but its what we thought. There are loads of Africans walking around trying to sell you rubbish like knock off watches etc. They are tall and very black and have this quiet mumbling chant way of speaking. They just seem out of place and somehow not right here amongst the Italian streets. There were about 50 of immigrants/refugees around the tower gates alone and they were more aggressive in their sales – like really getting in your face. I think they kind of tacky up the place, and really feel they should be banned from trying to sell junk wares there, its not what tourists come to see and experience.

We marched purposefully past the Africans and managed to get tickets for going up without much wait. They only let 30 people up at a time with a guide, and you only have about 40 minutes total for your intro talk, climb, viewing and decent. The stairs are quite narrow and on such a lean that it means one way traffic up and down. Plus there are no stair rails so you need to have at least one arm on the wall to stabilise yourself due to the lean and wear and tear on the steps!

It’s a whoah-funny feeling when you first enter the tower. It is a bit below ground level due to subsidence and drainage-stabilisation efforts and has a noticable slope to the floor. When you first step down into it you have to right yourself and engage yourself against the lean or you would fall which is quite unexpected. It actually makes you giggle at yourself and then as you watch others enter and do the “whoopsie”.

There are about 290 steps up, which is not too bad cardio wise, got a little dizzy as I do going windey windey and then when you hit viewing level its uneven so its also a bit like walking on a lurching boat until you find your sea legs, the photo of the bell shows the lean well. There is wear on the marble steps too being nearly 1000 years old which is kind of cool thinking of all the other feet that have past before you. They are very smooth and do not offer much traction either, apparently if it has rained slightly it is quite dangerous.

The views were great, and the weather was kind proving the weather forcast wrong again. It’s a little scary up there as it doesn’t have much in the way of a safety rail but well worth it if you can handle the climb and conditions.

The church is grand, but quite filled with relics of saints, priests etc and I personally have difficulty with that. To me its glorifying a human in a very expensive building and taking it away from a house of worshiping God. But I am not catholic so admit I may be a bit uneducated on it, just a personal opinion.

The baptistery whilst ornate outside with figurines, heads, gargoyles, animals and decorative carving is plainer inside except for a pulpit and a carving by a notable artist. It was very cleverly designed to act acoustically as an instrument. The video clip shows how one person can sing a harmony by – with themselves. This was a moving experience for both of us.

After taking silly photos of each other and the tower, we left Pisa for the quiet of Vernazza and enjoyed dinner at the pirate restaurant which ended up not only very tasty, but was highly entertaining. We we discovered that the host had an identical twin brother and the dining experience ended up a bit like Faulty towers with lots of fun banter. Our menu tonight was tortellini with ham and cream, eggplant parmigiana, and hand made crusty warm fresh bread. He also serves home made pickled vegetables with the most amazing creamy delicate baby onions that had no sharpness.

Another day of great adventure and experience! Oh and food…..

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