I miracoli pisani
And this is the last instalment of my Tuscan/Ligurian travelogue.
As the flight back to London on Monday was in the afternoon, we had time to stop in Pisa.
We had been twice before together (and I had worked/lived in Pisa for 1 year, in 1993/94) but it was great to go and see the Leaning Tower and the Piazza dei Miracoli again.
All the monuments have been thoroughly restored and cleaned, and the tower is open again for 'business'.
'Business' is certainly the right word as the ticket for the tower is a steep 15 euro! But, as I said, we didn't know whether we'd get another chance to do it and Adrian confessed to his (life-long?) ambition of climbing the tower, so we went to the ticket office and managed to get tickets straight away (another advantage of out-of-season travelling).
As you can see, it leans considerably
(apart from in this picture where the lens of camera straightened it!)
and when you are walking up the spiral staircase inside you get a weird but kind of wonderful dizzy feeling, the sensation of being on a rolling boat! (I swear that we didn't have any alcohol at breakfast!)
The views from the top are quite magnificent!
The other monuments in Piazza dei Miracoli are wonderful too, but this time we only visited the Cathedral
as we had already seen the Battistero and the Cemetery on previous visits.
Then we walked toward the city centre, stopping at the Piazza dei Cavalieri (which I have always liked a lot) before walking down to the river Arno.
The Cavalieri del Sacro Militare Ordine di Santo Stefano Papa e Martire were an order of knights, formed to fight the Turks and the pirates in the Mediterranean. Now the palazzo is part of the famous Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (university).
On the way back to the car park, we made a little detour to have a quick look at the office where I worked all those years ago...
We had quite a frantic drive back to the airport (we couldn't find an open petrol station and in the end we had to deliver the car with almost an empty tank) and a rush to catch the plane (which of course turned up to be delayed).
Quite often when we are on our way back to London, we joke that we are going 'back to civilisation'. Well this time neither of us could say it!
As the flight back to London on Monday was in the afternoon, we had time to stop in Pisa.
We had been twice before together (and I had worked/lived in Pisa for 1 year, in 1993/94) but it was great to go and see the Leaning Tower and the Piazza dei Miracoli again.
All the monuments have been thoroughly restored and cleaned, and the tower is open again for 'business'.
'Business' is certainly the right word as the ticket for the tower is a steep 15 euro! But, as I said, we didn't know whether we'd get another chance to do it and Adrian confessed to his (life-long?) ambition of climbing the tower, so we went to the ticket office and managed to get tickets straight away (another advantage of out-of-season travelling).
As you can see, it leans considerably
(apart from in this picture where the lens of camera straightened it!)
and when you are walking up the spiral staircase inside you get a weird but kind of wonderful dizzy feeling, the sensation of being on a rolling boat! (I swear that we didn't have any alcohol at breakfast!)
The views from the top are quite magnificent!
The other monuments in Piazza dei Miracoli are wonderful too, but this time we only visited the Cathedral
as we had already seen the Battistero and the Cemetery on previous visits.
Then we walked toward the city centre, stopping at the Piazza dei Cavalieri (which I have always liked a lot) before walking down to the river Arno.
The Cavalieri del Sacro Militare Ordine di Santo Stefano Papa e Martire were an order of knights, formed to fight the Turks and the pirates in the Mediterranean. Now the palazzo is part of the famous Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (university).
On the way back to the car park, we made a little detour to have a quick look at the office where I worked all those years ago...
We had quite a frantic drive back to the airport (we couldn't find an open petrol station and in the end we had to deliver the car with almost an empty tank) and a rush to catch the plane (which of course turned up to be delayed).
Quite often when we are on our way back to London, we joke that we are going 'back to civilisation'. Well this time neither of us could say it!