It's Pisa
"Please don't let it be Pisa"
That was my refrain through years of searching for a Tuscan pitch. On my first trip to Italy, I compared Pisa to Siena, Lucca, Florence, and Rome and found the city wanting. I wrote it off as a pretty piazza surrounded by an ugly city and left it at that.
Meanwhile, I engaged in a personal quest to find a busking pitch in Tuscany. Thwarted at every turn (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Pistoia, Prato, Viareggio, and Livorno), I eventually had success in Arezzo until the city passed a new anti-busking law in 2013.
So the quest was on again.
Meanwhile, I'd developed a template for good busking cities. Thriving universities are a huge help, full of my best demographics of students, professors, and young families. I've also gotten better at sussing out legal regulations before experimenting (growing proficiency in Italian has helped), and both pointed towards Pisa as a potential goldmine.
So I came back. And I found the city to be beautiful.
Pisa is certainly no Siena or Florence, but it's in the upper echelon of pretty places I've seen. I'd missed the loveliest part of the medieval core on my last visit, and a broader basis for comparison was a much gentler standard.
It's much prettier than Arezzo, for example.
The busking has been good, the city a pleasure to visit, and I'm already incorporating it into potential future itineraries.
Now I'm in Modena and back on familiar ground. The time for experimentation is over, and the final three weeks are in cities that have previously been good to me. The adventures continue!
That was my refrain through years of searching for a Tuscan pitch. On my first trip to Italy, I compared Pisa to Siena, Lucca, Florence, and Rome and found the city wanting. I wrote it off as a pretty piazza surrounded by an ugly city and left it at that.
Meanwhile, I engaged in a personal quest to find a busking pitch in Tuscany. Thwarted at every turn (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Pistoia, Prato, Viareggio, and Livorno), I eventually had success in Arezzo until the city passed a new anti-busking law in 2013.
So the quest was on again.
Meanwhile, I'd developed a template for good busking cities. Thriving universities are a huge help, full of my best demographics of students, professors, and young families. I've also gotten better at sussing out legal regulations before experimenting (growing proficiency in Italian has helped), and both pointed towards Pisa as a potential goldmine.
So I came back. And I found the city to be beautiful.
Pisa is certainly no Siena or Florence, but it's in the upper echelon of pretty places I've seen. I'd missed the loveliest part of the medieval core on my last visit, and a broader basis for comparison was a much gentler standard.
It's much prettier than Arezzo, for example.
The busking has been good, the city a pleasure to visit, and I'm already incorporating it into potential future itineraries.
Now I'm in Modena and back on familiar ground. The time for experimentation is over, and the final three weeks are in cities that have previously been good to me. The adventures continue!