Final Europe trip, Post 5: Tuscany, Lucca, Pisa

After our two nights in Florence, on Wednesday morning we set off for the town of Lucca, near Pisa. We chose some random places on the map to direct our GPS to so that we could take a long, winding route through the beautiful region of Tuscany. During our drive, we saw endless hills and valleys patchworked with either tan-coloured fields of stubble, or green fields of crops, grapevines or olive trees. There were also frequent sunflower plantations.



One of the things we noticed in Italy was that a lot of street signs had the word "delle" on them, which turned out to mean something like "of the", but was quite exciting for our travelling companion! :) In the sweet little town in the mountains where we stopped for lunch, we took a photo of Delle beside a sign that had her name on it, at the start of a gorgeous little residential road with stone arches and house windows full of flowerpots.


In the afternoon, we stopped in a coastal town and walked along some cliffs above a beach, which was covered in brightly coloured umbrellas, towels and deck chairs, as well as many brown-skinned Italians wearing very little whilst engaging in the process of becoming even more roasted. The ocean was bright blue with big rocks jutting out of it near the water's edge, and the "sand" was mostly small grey rocks, although I think we did see actual sand in one part. After enjoying the seaside atmosphere for an hour or two, and eating some ice cream cones, we continued on to Lucca.



Lucca is a nice little town about 15 minutes away from Pisa, home of the Leaning Tower. As we neared Lucca, Delle gazed out the window at a town across an empty field from the road we were on, started commenting on the awesome domed roofs rising above the other buildings, and interrupted herself mid-sentence with a loud squawk along the lines of: "THERE'S THE LEANING TOWER!!!" And she'd recognised it because of its architectural appearance, not by the fact that it is leaning over!

Pisa is quite a small town and the Leaning Tower is just sitting casually in the middle of it, visible from a distance away as there are no other tall buildings, so it's quite a jolt to suddenly notice something so famous when you hadn't realised it was nearby - just like Ben and I felt when we happened to glimpse the silhouette of Stonehenge one night while driving along a random highway in England! (Re the other photo below - even in Italy, it appears that all roads don't actually lead to Rome??)



In Lucca, we stayed in a cute little B&B and walked in towards the centre of town to find some tea that evening. In order to avoid walking on the edge of the main road, which had very little space between the traffic zooming past and the wall beside the road, we ended up taking a rather adventurous route that included traipsing along an overgrown levy bank above peoples' back yards. This ended up only saving a block of roadside walking, but was rather fun anyway! That night we ate more yummy pizzas and other pizza-like things. :)



The next day, Thursday, we did the touristy Leaning Tower thing. :) It was an extremely hot day and the area around the tower was just like we remembered it being on our 2006 visit - persistent guys selling knock-off sunnies/watches/handbags etc from extremely temporary stalls (i.e. able to be picked up and run with should police appear), lots of tacky but amusing souvenirs such as leaning mugs and "David boxers", and hundreds of tourists posing for their cliched "look, I'm holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa" photos. This time I insisted on being one of them - something I hadn't done last time, and had resolved to wholeheartedly rectify on this visit. :)















There are a couple of other elaborate, very old buildings in the same place as the Leaning Tower too - a cathedral and a baptisery. Delle paid to go inside both of them while Ben and I just wandered around the nearby streets and markets, but none of us actually climbed the Leaning Tower. Perhaps it's a good example of supply and demand in action when it costs three times as much to climb the tower as it does to go inside the other less-famous buildings! Or maybe it's just to cover the insurance in case it topples over... :)



After a few hours in Pisa, it was time to head to the airport for our RyanAir flight back to Frankfurt Hahn, where we'd left our car. By that night we had collected Dotti and her brother Lachlan, had a couple of fairly hilarious (in hindsight) car-related misadventures, and arrived at convention in Germany. More on all of that next time!

Final Europe trip, Post 4: More about Florence

On our second day in Florence, we set off for some local markets. They were in a park that we reached by walking a fair way alongside the river, and we had quite a successful shopping excursion! Delle got a shirt, and I got two shirts and a €10 carry-on-size suitcase. It came in rather handy as I could use it as a portable chair for the rest of the day! (Not to mention that it also came in pretty handy when we flew all of our purchases back to Australia!) The first photo below is of the view at breakfast that morning from the eating area at Camping Michelangelo, where we stayed...













Later on we came across the Florence Cathedral, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. This was a huge, grand church building with an exterior of white, green and pink marble. It also had a large dome that Delle lined up to climb to the top of! Below are some of my photos of the outside of the Cathedral, and some of Delle's photos of the amazing view of Florence from the top.

















We also found a couple of smaller markets, at one of which there was a bronze statue of a pig - a fountain that was no longer in use. The pig's snout was very shiny and smooth, and we observed some tourists rubbing its snout and throwing money into its mouth. To find out what it was all about, just now I looked up the pig and discovered that there is a little-known Hans Christian Andersen story about it ("The Metal Pig" or "The Bronze Pig"), which begins like this...

"In the city of Florence, not far from the Piazza del Granduca, runs a little street called Porta Rosa. In this street, just in front of the market-place where vegetables are sold, stands a pig, made of brass and curiously formed. The bright color has been changed by age to dark green; but clear, fresh water pours from the snout, which shines as if it had been polished, and so indeed it has, for hundreds of poor people and children seize it in their hands as they place their mouths close to the mouth of the animal, to drink..."



Click here if interested in reading the rest! We purchased a few ties at this market (the one in the second photo below) - including yours, Dad! Nearby, there were some pavement artists hard at work on a chalk painting to raise money for their yearly permit fee to "occupy public space", which had just been increased to nine times its previous amount!! :O









That night we had tea at a restaurant across the road from Camping Michelangelo, and the next day we were off to Lucca, near Pisa, via the beautiful Tuscan countryside - which I'll tell you all about next time!

Final Europe trip, Post 3: Fabulous Florence

On Monday we set off from Venice to Florence (Firenze in Italian) in our hire car. We had lunch in some random town along the way, sheltering from the pouring rain and eating delicious pasta dishes that became some of our favourite meals on the trip.

When we reached Florence, where none of us had ever been before, we discovered that our accommodation for the next two nights - a 3-bed house tent at Camping Michelangelo - was on the side of a hill overlooking the beautiful city of Florence, and right next to the Piazzale Michelangelo, where one of the copies of Michelangelo's statue of David is (Florence is home to one other copy and the original). The first photo below shows our house tent and hire car, the second photo shows our campsite from the Piazzale Michelangelo (it's hidden under all the trees), and the third and fourth photos show the view of Florence from the Piazzale, and David.



That evening we wandered around the centre of Florence, an absolutely gorgeous city with lots of bridges, lots of scooters and motorbikes, and lots of elaborate gelati displays (see photos below). We were a little sad to discover that gelati had been much cheaper in Venice though (but we still ate some). We also saw quite a lot of small electric city buses, and even an electric three-wheeled one-seater car charging in a carpark (yellow one in photo below)!



There was a square in the city centre where there were a lot of statues, including the other copy of David and a Neptune. We think this was outside the museum where the real David is, which we didn't see. In another part of the city, across from the river in what we've just discovered was the courtyard between the Uffizi Gallery's two wings (thanks Wikipedia!), Ben was quite excited to find a statue of Machiavelli.



One of the things we loved about Florence was the Ponte Vecchio (meaning "old bridge" in Italian). This is a bridge with shops along both sides of it (mostly jewellers, souvenir shops and art dealers these days), and from the outside you can see that the shops jut out from the base of the bridge a little, and are supported by steel rods. Here are some photos of the bridge from various angles (the last photo is of the sunset as seen from the Ponte Vecchio this first night)...



We crossed the bridge a few times that night and the next day, and on this first night the centre of the bridge was occupied by a guitar-playing busker who had quite a sizeable audience gathered on both sides of the bridge, enjoying his songs and taking photos of the magnificent sunset. There is a gap in the shops on both sides of the bridge at the centre, making for a lovely view of the river in both directions, and a brilliant spot for a concert!! We listened to him for a while and bought his CD. Check out the photos and video below!

That night we had scrumptious pizzas for tea, and experimented with various camera settings to get some night shots of Florence on our way back up the hill to Camping Michelangelo. Check out the awesome night view from the Piazzale Michelangelo (fifth photo below)...



I think I've unintentionally toned down my raving about places in blog entries over the last year :P, but Florence is truly beautiful... interesting architecture, lots of culture, great shopping, wonderful food, and friendly locals. On one of our nights in Florence, a very old and small Italian lady, who spoke only a little English, saw Ben lift me down from a wall and stopped to call him a gentleman and wish us a nice holiday. :) Florence was the perfect place to visit in between seeing Venice and Pisa (our next destination), which are both very comercialised and feel as though they would be almost empty if all the tourists were to disappear.

Anyway, I was going to write about the next day now as well, but this entry is already quite long, so more next time! :) Bye for now!