Florence

2/10

FLORENCE/FIRENZE

So, we ALL slept in until 0900 and having thoroughly enjoyed breakfast, we schooled and cleaned up Ed before Mum went over to the monstrous COOP to shop.  The kids skated about some more between writing.

Then it was a slow easy music filled drive to Florence where we navigated to a wondrous campground in an old olive grove up on the hill overlooking the old city.  

Tucked into a beautiful quiet park, we put on several loads of stinky washing and Mum made a huge smelly Italian pasta for lunch.  Dad & Wil cleaned out Ed’s garage and tinkered with bikes, the squids then invented farnarckling games, Mum prepared a tour itinerary and then after coffee & biscotti, we strolled up to Piazza Michelangelo to watch the sun go down whilst buskers played soothing folky stuff.  

There we found the very guy who committed crime after crime in the Wilsen household - left the lid off the toothpaste, put the empty milk carton back in the fridge, ruffled the tassels on the rugs............the Green man!

We marveled at gold lined clouds, the massive Duomo, the Fiume Arno colouring up beneath a series of bridges with the Ponte Vecchio taking prime position, and a tantalizing city packed with magnificent architecture that we can’t wait to explore. 

The Synagogue

Kel and Sebastian

3/10   HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNTY MANDY DICICCO!

10 BX on farnarckling court before the usual colazione & scuola.  We’d decided on a walking tour (rather than a hop on hop off bus) as most things are quite close together.

A magnificent grand Dante Alighieri, one of the 34 ‘Dante landmarks’ in Florence, greeted us outside Santa Croce.  It’s beautiful facade is typical of Florence with multicolored geometrically patterned green, pink, black on white Prato marble.

Santa Croce

Inside was like an art gallery with amazing religious frescos by all sorts of greats &, like Westminster Abbey, it then became a cemetery housing the ornate tombs of hallowed Florentines like Galileo, Michelangelo, Rossini & Machiavelli.  

Dante

Gallileo

Michelangelo

lots of other dead people under foot

There were some really old frescos depicting the story of St Francis of Assisi as well as those dedicated to the wealthy founding Medici family.  Outside the church seemed to go on forever with an attached museum of religious art, an undercover sub-terranian cemetery, cloistered courtyards, a basilica by Donatello and another huge religious medieval & Renaissance art gallery.

boobs galore, but live ladies can't bear knees or shoulders to get in today 

Exhausted, we plonked on the steps outside for lunch of bread, cheese, lettuce & salami. 

Our trek to the bookshop we’d been recommended by the tourist office was not there but just around the corner was the extraordinary Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria (where “Bonfire of the Vanities” was set, when an angry monk burnt ‘excesses’ and was promptly exiled) which connects to Plaza Repubblica, full of Di Cambio architecture (on Roman foundations).  

Stacks of history has filled these connected squares and is marked by several enormous open loggias that were initially graineries & fish markets, then oration platforms & public assemblies, then art galleries for sculptors and now hang-outs for photographers and weary picnicking tourists.

Neptune

another David + friends

Ready for refreshments we found a gelateria to rival GROM.  WOW pistachio, hazelnut….

We dawdled homeward via innumerable shops full of leather goods, shoes & very expensive winter fashion. 

shopping goggles

A quick 1^st (of many) look at the Duomo with it’s magnificent Bell Tower and the Baptistry, 

Bell Tower

and then turned for home, crossing the famous Ponte Vecchio.  We crawled at snail’s pace past all the jewelry shoppers and chatted about its history initially as a commercial centre housing textile workers & butchers who conveniently dumped waste into the river before The Medicis ordered the smell be cleaned up and brought in the jewelers!

on the Pont Vecchio

Looking back over it’s quaint design, we considered why it was the only bridge left standing on Hitlers orders after WW2 - was it just too cute or couldn’t one cross with tanks anyways as it is too narrow?? 

next to the Uffizi, under the Gallileo museum: the Rowing Club!

Salad for dinner & passed out in the incredible quiet of our campsite.

4/10

Run with Jeff around esplanades and across bridges, over rowing courses

Watching the beautiful UNESCO city wake up, smelling the coffee & croissants (or cornettos as they call them here.)

Back with our children, we enjoyed a relaxing shower, breakfast and school of maths & Italian intermixed with the kid’s farnarckling championships!

Ready to explore again, we started at our favourite ‘Green Man’ (one of the many, but bronze replicas of Michelangelo’s David) balcony overlooking Florence checking out where we’ve been and where we plan to go.

Down the hill, we took new pretty streets &, as there are so many to choose from, different bridges to Galileo’s Museum where we got lost in the wonderful bookshop for a while. Curiosity mounting, we fueled with cannoli Sicilianis (sweet ricotta stuffed, chocolate lined sweet crunchy crepes that Wil has been talking about since his Italian teacher in grade 4 at Holy Family made them as part of an Italian lesson) and hit the Duomo.  Wil took a photo essay of the church including snaps of the incredible enormous marble statues over the way of the responsible architects, di Cambio & later, Brunelleschi who sits staring up at the Dome.  

Brunelleschi pondering his Dome

He engineered the huge and magnificent dome and di Cambio, the rest.  Sadly diCambio’s facade was demolished by a disapproving Medici who didn’t like it.  His replacement (rushed for the wedding of one of his kids) didn’t last and only in the 1850s did the Tuscan Association finally complete the current beauty.  Inside, the most inspiring part is the INCREDIBLE Vasari & Zuccari dome fresco of The Last Judgement.  

One can really appreciate the Renaissance discovery of perspective drawing here with figures sitting neat the top who almost seem to be on the verge of toppling out of the fresco.

We decided to climb the 500 steps of the adjacent bell tower, one of the most decorated buildings in the world, to snuggle closer to the dome and the ornate Duomo roof as well as to look over Florence with it’s carefully planned river side valley location, tucked beneath a circle of hills.  It is a wonderful vantage point to look at the city’s modification over time with Roman lay out, old grand rectangular buildings around courts that have been filled in with all sorts of little terracotta roofs at different angles, like we used to build our card houses as kids.  One can see the ~150 house towers built by the wealthy to escape invaders and then the numerous sumptuous significant sites on a scale miniaturizing the rest as they soar to the sky. 

Heading for a well researched pizza joint that we promised the kids, we got way laid in the sprawling endless San Lorenzo markets that smell of rich leather shoes, bags, belts & jackets to finally arrive at our destination that was….closed!

Santa Maria Novella

So, in the homeward direction, we parked up at a cute pizzeria and, like everywhere here, paid through the nose to sit down, have water and bread we didn’t ask for, the ubiquitously uninspiring salad and some pizza.  We all decided to continue dining at Cucina Eduardo and whilst out simply enjoy the magnificent coffee & gelato.

Back home, we showered up & read waiting for dark and then, in PJs walked up to our Green Man to enjoy the city lights.

5/10  DAY 4 in Florence

Adulti walk1 hour 20 minutes around the gardens, hills & palaces whilst the warmth creeps into the day and folk scream to work on scooters.  Jeff remembers contemplating his (immature) navel sitting in the gardens when here some 20 years ago with mates.  We snuck in a coffee on our bar balcony before joining the youngsters still tucked up with books.

Today we did things differently, first viewing a wonderful DVD on Florentine history with discussion about the French inspired fleur-de-lys coat of arms, how the dome was built and what characterizes the Renaissance...then lesson 20 of 30 Italian lessons (Wil sounds great, Kel surprises us with her memory, Jen mixes up vowels and Jeff just draws blanks - the rate limiting pupil.)

After a sandwich & fruit lunch, we’d scheduled a Michelangelo session at San Lorenzo.  Again, waylaid snapping the Duomo and the Baptistry doors, incredibly beautifully sculpted by Donatello (we think??)

Unfortunately when got to San Lorenzo we learned there are 3 different tickets, one only open in the morning….. So we viewed the church full of incredible religious art by significant others like Lippi, Donatello’s bronze pulpits, Botticelli, Dicicco (!)... And will have to return tomorrow to see Michelangelo’s stuff.

The rest of the late afternoon & evening were spent in the markets trying to pick up small stuff for family and stuff for Jen.  Jeff enjoyed bargaining a guy down form E1800 to E500 for a soft gorgeous longer leather jacket for Jen....but just not in our budget.  Jen prefers to walk away.  We looked at hand bags for Jen - can’t tell what’s real, a fair bit of poorly made fakes; wonderful Florentine paper (kids were given E5 & both spent it on small leather palm sized diaries) and finally hit on last season’s fashions at “Coin” buying a summer skirt & dress by Desigual as well as some Spanish rubber soled groovy work & play multifunctional shoes.  Jen, the well known shopping addict - not (rather fashion victim!!), could not disguise the jaw-dropping prices compared with Oz (dress E99 vs $400 in Oz - same previously admired dress at Timbuctoo Toowong!)

As the dusk approached we passed the Duomo again, more pics:

We splurged on gelati again for dinner at our favourite shop, and chatted all the way home beneath the golden city lights.  Passing through the Uffizi corridor, we marveled at just how many famous Italians there are, some of whom, including Amerigo Vespucci, Gallileo, Brunelleschi, Dante, Michelangelo, Da Vinci and many, many more, stand tall & larger than life along the corridor’s perimeter.

Florence was certainly worthy of having been new Independent Italy’s capital in the 1860s before the honour shifted to Rome.

6/10 DAY 5 FLORENCE

Us adults were slow to wake given a quiet saturating slumber aided by cooler and darker mornings - the cold is creeping up on us.  Nonetheless, Jen poked Jeff’s ribs at 0730 for the exercise 10 BX ritual, this time under the olive trees.  Without words, creeping around first in the van to the soft kiddy snores as we pull on the lycra giving each other encouraging “has to be done” smiles!

At breakfast Kel curls her long legs up under her chin showing off innumerable irritated mozzie bites.  Thought Oz had mozzies!  Apparently, the new Italy’s famous prime minister, Carvour, died at only 50 with what sounds like malaria in 1863 - not surprised.

The river Arno is quite manky & whilst wide, has little flow.

Having missed Michelangelo’s Laurenziana LIbrary & Cappelli Medici sculptures yesterday, we made for San Lorenzo first thing, along our now well trodden path.  

The kids had writing projects planned, Kel creating a yesteryear scene in the library as a young girl growing up in Renaissance Florence and Wil, doing a Feldmann art analysis of his favourite Michelangelo work in the New Sacristy.  He chose one on Duke Lorenzo’s Sarcophagus which depicts the pensive leader seated with Day & Night at his feet atop his tomb.

The sculptures were OK (his ladies have breasts on men’s torsos & women’s heads - he was known to judge the nude male as a supreme art form & may have been gay) but the library was exquisite with Mich’s elegant staircase,

etched wooden ceilings, an incredibly intricate terracota & white tile floor, exquisite stain glass windows and wooden reading pews each signed with moveable wooden plaques containing the row’s book catalogue. 

Attached to the library was an absolutely wonderful exhibition showing of the Magnifici Tre  - the libri d’ Ore commissioned by Lorenzo di Medici for his 3 daughter’s wedding gifts.

They are magnificent little prayer books adorned & bound with gold, silver, gemstones & enamels on the finest paper.  Famous artists took three years each to assemble the masterpieces.  Wil was spell bound and listed it as easily his favourite thing of the day.  Kel was inspired to write reflective poetry in her teeny E3 pink leather diary.

The New Sacrist adjoins the Cappeli Medici, the truly awesome mauseleum those grand gentlemen and their Papal rellies built for themselves.  The scale of the Chapel is astounding - it’s a monument to finest stone work and the expense must have been truly staggeringly incomprehensible, especially compared with the “average wage” of the time.  And then there’s the dome ceiling fresco……

We snacked on the steps outside when done and then, after buying the J’s a leather market belt each, made for the gelato shop again!

Dad & kids wandered home to complete school work, stopping to admire the detail of the David at Piazza Vecchio and to sit on benches sharing far flung fairy fables.

hand of David

Jen lingered buying a few gifts for family & checking out leather bags.  There are 2 rough groups - cheap & nasty and really expensive & nice.  Just like the leather jackets. She came home predictably empty handed having decided neither of these items are on her list anyway.

Back at base camp, we cooked up a large BBQ salmon parcel each (sun-dried toms, garlic, pesto, red capsicum & nuts on a bed of cous-cous) & then sat about to read.

Jeff ducked out to buy the young blokes birthday present whilst we read and washed up.

Then it was off up the hill to Piazza Michelangelo and the Green Man to skate and watch the sun set, closely followed by a shower, light dinner and a movie for the kids.

Up in the greys of the morning with the small tweeting birds and onto our bikes we explored the greater perimeters of Florence.  Being a Sunday morning the traffic was greatly reduced, tourists were still in bed and scooters were on their day off such that we could get right across to connecting parklands and get up some speed.  Market stalls were busily setting up in the local suburbs and the odd joggers were plodding the river side & parkland walking tracks. At the sprawling poorer suburban edges of the city, we were surprised to see people burning off their household waste generating enormous plumes of stinky smoke that hung heavily over the UNESCO listed city. 

Crossing back over the Arno, we climbed the city’s highest hill to the views from the San Miniato al Monte church which is encircled by the most extensive cemetry. Unattractive enormous mausoleums messily crowd around each other - somewhere in there are many greats including Carlo Lorenzini. 

As well as the usual routine, we did another 2 load of washing, skyped Gren & the Boticas (who coincidentally told us not to miss the town we planned to visit, San Gimignano, where G remembers his finest ever, to date unrivalled, spaghetti marinara!) and stole a great coffee together at the balcony bar between loads whilst the kids finished their writing.

Pinocchio at Collodi

1/10 COLLODI - by Wilsen Conn

I reckon the first of October earned the earliest-out-of-bed award for this year.

Mum went for a run around the walls of Lucca again, at 0630 (in the dark).  For us there was no time for reading (unusual) and no time to dawdle (even more unusual for me).  We had to be ready to take Ed to the repair workshop for his battery to be replaced and to have a switch put in.

It’s lucky Mum and Dad speak a little bit of Italian, because the workers didn’t speak English.

We managed to get across that we wanted to go to the Parco di Pinocchio while we waited for the car to be serviced.  The one worker who spoke a teeny bit of English was in charge of the place &  lent us the keys to an ancient old vivid turquoise green Fiat Panda.  When Kel and I clambered into the back seats, we were a bit surprised by how low the car was! We were used to being the size of a small truck, not lower than most of the other cars that passed us.  The most comical thing about the Panda was when Dad got in.  His knees were up around his ears!  He had to take his shoes off to use the pedals properly. 

"Not so squeezy!"

The Panda was so old it didn’t seal properly, the wind whistled around inside as we shot down the road to Collodi.  Collodi is the home of ‘Carlo Collodi’ (pen name of the author of Pinocchio, his real name was Carlo Lorenzini) and the location of the Pinocchio Park.  We all tumbled out of the little Fiat to see the park.  As we entered, we saw a little gallery of Pinocchio - related art from all over the world including a wire South African one.  

We stepped outside and the first thing I saw was a huge chess set.  I immediately insisted that we have a game before anything else.  Dad and Kel smashed me in a twenty minute game of chess practically running all over the board.

After that, we moved on through the park, admiring a little ‘piazzetta’ (square) of mosaics.

Jiminy Cricket

The Carabinieri

We walked out of the square and found in our path… a bar.  Mum and Dad went in for a coffee and Kel and I played in a nearby playground.  When Mum and Dad were done, we went out in to a sort - of maze.  We had a map though!  It was like a foresty garden with narrow paths and bronze & metal statues related to Pinocchio.  We wandered through, admiring the statues and holding up leaves, pretending to be tour guides.  My favourite statue was a giant one of the shark that swallows Geppetto...and then Pinocchio.  

We all walked through it, saw a statue of Geppetto and climbed to the top via an extremely tight spiral staircase.  Next was  an actual maze for getting lost in.  Luckily, we got lost.  What fun is it if you don’t?  After finding our way out, we started heading back to the exit we had a big lunch of pizza and salad in the park restaurant.  The waiters put us all in Pinocchio party hats (which I managed to endure). 

The Blue Fairy

After lunch, Kel decided she wanted to use the maze again, so she and Dad went to that while Mum and I had another game of chess.  When we met up again, Dad helped Mum smash me in our chess game. 

We decided that since we hadn’t yet got a call from the workers saying that Ed was ready, we toddled back into the park. Kel and I had a look around the original trailer-car-cart thingy that travelled all over Italy in the late 1800s telling Pinocchio’s story.  It had little mechanical (not electrical) automatic marionettes acting the story.  Below them it had panels with the story written in Italian on them.  After Kel and I came out of the trailer, the Conns strolled out of the Pinocchio Park and up into the little town of Collodi.  We puffed up a hill through narrow, steep cobbled streets lined with little houses.  

Reaching the top, we took some photos of the surrounding area and walked back down.  We saw these tiny tomato thingys which Kel and I rolled down the streets.  They bounced crazily.  

communal laundry

When we got to the bottom, we got back in to the Panda and shot back home. We stopped on the way for a coffee.  Mum and Dad left us Kids in the car.  Kel and I discovered that when you slap yourself on the back of your hand, it doesn’t hurt so much.  So Kel and I whacked each other on the back of our hands till Mum and Dad came back.

When we reached the workshop, Ed wasn’t done.  So we got our sketchpads and books and did some drawing in a sort of lunch room the workers offered us.  We were told that the car was done before we expected it to be.  So, we were shown all the improvements and Dad paid the €430 it cost us.  We all piled into Ed and Dad commented on how high he was (compared with the Panda).  We trundled off down the highway towards Florence and stopped in a large carpark in Fucecchio for the night.  Kel and I got out our skates and skated ourselves silly, until it was dark.  We then took off our skates and got all rugged up in our PJs inside, and sat down for a cold yoghurt dinner.

That night the kids slept like they normally do - well.  The oldies were up ½ the night with the noisy locals - 4 guys came in the night with 2 large white flags each and stood around in a square next to Ed doing synchronised waving tricks and then periodically chucking the flags up into the air and trying to catch them, while shouting at each other in exhuberant Italian.  Someone else had doof-doof music thumping at full volume across the road - or was it a night club?  Ahh we love Italy.  

Lucca

28/9 PISA TO LUCCA

Great sleep, very quiet night, Jen off for an early walk on this fine morning to round the Torre once more before the crowds.

Back at Ed she joined Jeff for a vigorous 10BX with added arm flailing to shoo the mossies away.  Tucked into some maths while all the wet gear is draped out in the hot sun, drying in no time.

Off for Lucca, via a Carrefour Supermarket where we stocked up big time (€227, including lots of one off stuff to doll Ed up), then ½ hr drive and we pulled up in a council aire, did lunch al fresco “sotto l’albero” (under a tree - these lessons are working?), had a read, another coffee and a chat about the pearls of wisdom that can come from the study of history while the kids did some scootering tricks (wheelies!)   

Then we walked the ~ 1.5km into the walled citadella where our agenda was pretty free - and so much to see.  

A network of narrow cobbled alleys lined with restaurants, shops peddling swish clothing, gourmet foods, books, sunglasses and shoes, shoes, shoes.  Found ourselves admiring the strikingly handsome Puccini (this is his town),

Mr Puccini

Took in some marvelous mostly marble churches with their regional green & white striped decorative style, 

then to the old Roman amphitheatre which has been thoroughly built upon, retaining only the familiar elliptical shape and the odd piece of old rock.  Strange to imagine that where the amorous lovers of fine cuisine sit today there were so many blood thirsty battles between man and beast 2 millennia ago, all in the name of entertainment. 

in the arena

a Roman remnant

Then across the town via the shopping main drag to the cathedral with it’s own version of “The Last Supper” painted by famous Venetian ,Tintoretto, 

Cathedral door (1 of 3)

a sit with a chat on some steps by a truly Italiano gate and wall, 

and then home via the markets to pick up dessert (nougat covered in  a crust of hazelnuts in toffee).

Wipe washes, dinner and wash-up done by 7.30, another 1-2 hrs of reading, chatting (Kel interjecting every few minutes to update us on Harry Potter’s progress, she’s reading the 4^th book, the 2^nd time she’s read the series this year), + downloading and editing photos and blog writing.  Another great day in Italy.

29/9  LUCCA

The J's went off for separate runs around the Passeggio del Mura (the gorgeous circumferential city wall that until just recently was open to car traffic) admiring Lovely Lucca from a high, busy with Saturday market set-up and both thence concluding that we should stay another few days.  Europe’s ubiquitous morning aroma of coffee & fresh baking is unbeatable.  It comes from apartments, homely windows, small cafes, patisseries, bars and even service stations.  Wish we did this buzzing market thing in Oz - almost all towns stand still for the morning and streets are heavily laden with all sorts of produce.  No-one is frustrated with the congestion.  Local police help with traffic & tourists and all is very merry.

So after breakfast, we left our council park & made for the local camping ground a few kms away in the hopes that it would provide a quieter park up with showers (nice after sweaty runs - still quite hot & sticky with most days in the high 20s ).   Taking advantage of Saturday morning business hours, we went via a camper store, Natiliberi Campers, to see about increasing our leisure/accessory battery (1 of which is dead) power by maybe changing the circuitry from batteries in series to batteries in parallel (?) thus allowing more free camping days.  Seems they can do it for us on Monday.  With Gabriele & Barbara opening & tickling Ed’s gizzards, the kids sat at the table out of the way & smashed their maths, pausing for the odd sticky beak.  Just in time before "chuiso per siesta," we settled into a well equipped campsite near the river Sechio.  After a tidy up of ourselves, Ed and another coffee, we prepared a big lunch of BBQ fish before digesting with books. 

In the late afternoon, we jumped on the bikes to show the kids the wonderful wall with its beautiful green spaces around the crumbled bastion ruins and the riding and cycling circuit punctuated by shaddy playgrounds.  Kel practiced tumbling backwards on the rings and Wil practiced leaping sideways a la Ace Ventura over anything and everything.

With the luxury of plug in electricity, young and old enjoyed a movie night.  The kids giggled at Shrek 2 and the adults grimaced through Il Divo, a brilliantly made & filmed Italian documentary/movie about Guilia Andreotti, a recent Christian Democratic politician who served as president for 7 terms and his debated involvement with the Mafia.

30/9  ANOTHER DAY IN LOVELY LUCCA

Storms were predicted later in the day with rainfall pretty much from late morning so the Js  set off early for a wonderful bike ride along Fiume Sechio with 4 x 20 push ups, sit ups & tricep dips and the turn around mark.

Hanging for breakfast, we showered up quickly and over our relaxing coffee decided to bike ride & skate through old Lucca in the morning and go to school in the afternoon.

The kids brushed away a bit of skating rust with the Sunday morning exercisers providing an obstacle course.  

Wheels off, we sauntered easily & more pleasurably through the streets as most shops were closed.  

We pulled up for another skate around the piazzo de Duomo watching the congregation spill out after mass.  Nuns made their way skillfully & patiently around bikers, tourists & skating kids and beautifully dressed middle aged women in heels pulled up on their bikes, baskets full of bread & market items, for a quick genuflect.  Jeff artistically drank in his surrounds with his camera lens seeing character & detail that one can almost smell.

Without a map, we followed interesting lanes , stopped for a soupy hot chocolate & coffee, looked at some art and slowly found our way back to the bikes. 

Italian version of the Phantom - "Ghost who walks......"

The younguns schooled doing maths, writing and research (Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Girabaldi, Bob Marley & Rastafarianism.…)  Mumma prepared curried egg & lettuce sandwiches with milk & nectarines and the Big Daddy took off Wil’s heel brakes on his skates now that he has other rapid stop techniques!

Then the storm hit.  Wil suggested he & Kel get into their undies and jump in the huge puddles.  Kel lingered, hand standing, sweetly singing and then composing songs under an umbrella about how good her life is.

We drifting into a peaceful evening & night to the music of thunder and heavy rain - hopefully it’ll cool things down even if just for a good sleep tonight.

Pisa

27/9  BIG FELLA JEFFIE BOTICA’S BIRTHDAY!

PISA - Galileo & Leaning Tower

The J’s enjoyed a magnificent morning run along the seafront & through the old train tunnels & tracks that we rode as a family yesterday.  The day was just waking up and the plane trails like scratches, criss-crossed the sky and were filled with the glow of the rising sunlight as if golden glitter were rubbed over and caught in the furrows.

Back at home, we powered through school, tidied Ed, put up his signs, loaded the blog and skyped, called, messaged Mr Big Fella Jeff.

Our drive alongside the extensively quarried Dolomite like Apennines (how many of us have chunks of kitchen from this area?) had us pulling into flat Pisa in no time where tantalizing snapshots of the Leaning Tower poked out between pencil pines. 

We easily located our rest stop only 2 kms away from the Torre, enjoyed a smelly pasta lunch of anchovies, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, boccincini, pesto, egg, tomatoes, carrot and pasta in a mushroom sauce and jumped on the bikes despite the rain.  

Coming into Piazza Del Miracoli was thrilling.  Claimed to be one of the world’s prettiest, we rapidly concurred, despite the drizzle.  The Tower’s lean seems incredulous and it is easily the prettiest, almost cute and quite little bell-tower we’ve seen.  

The surrounding large grassed Piazza houses Romanesque beauties including the Cathedral, the striking Camposanto (cemetery), the baptistry and the museum.  Even though it was raining ,there were thousands of folk delighting in the famous square along with us - imagine it on a sunny day!  What makes it utterly gorgeous is the concentration of almost gleaming white & green marble - even on the footpaths.  Sufficiently ‘wowed’ lingering and pouring over the majestic exteriors & the really interesting video about Bananno Pisano’s architectural botch up (never got a soil test) without having to pay entry tickets to anything, we then enjoyed coffees and hot chocolate before taking a soaking ride home to Ed.  

We sat and chatted about how cleverly the tower’s stability has been secured. It took a panel of international interdisciplinary experts 10 years to work out & execute.Using 40 massive archimedes screws on its northern face ,they removed enough claylike (once bottom of the ocean) sandy soil to reduce it’s tilt enough to allow another 300 years of visitor traffic!  Jeff wondered why the hell they didn’t bother simply bailing out in 1061 when the first 4 tiers developed a scary tilt.  Why pull it down and rebuild it then?   Wil reckoned they knew about the tourist Euros to come.  The project was abandoned twice over several hundred years before it was finally completed in the late 1300s with the belfry placed at an opposite angle to it’s lean.  And then all the Euros and sense (international team of experts ) that went into the recent (last 20yrs) strengthening and replenishing - we are sure that with today’s technology they could have straightened it up to perfect vertical, and bolstered/supported it there for another 1000yrs+, but for the touro Euros - who would visit then?  Big Al and his Root Barrier could have done it!  Just need a 2m trench, some sheets of polythene and a garden hose.

Whilst now largely a busy university (which has taken over the most gorgeous Piazza del Cavallieri with it’s incredible rich graffiti plaster work) & tourist town, it’s clearly very wealthy maritime past is evidenced by these piazzas & splendid monuments. Apparently the river silted up preventing access to the sea. There was not much fuss sadly about the city’s famous Galileo who taught at this university - we’ll chase more about him in Florence.

So, we dried off in Ed for an Italian lesson, dinner and a big juicy read.