Two More Cities

Hello everyone

This is the final set of notes for this six week trip, the highlight of which was easily Tim and Kate’s Wedding.

We’ve driven up from Parma in no great rush, taking three days to cover the 700 miles and I’m sending this from Belgium where we think we’re on a different site to the one we meant to be on but it is very pleasant.  The local town has a theme park called Plopsaland which we’ve given a miss and tomorrow we catch the ferry from Dunkerque.

Regards

Les

Weddings are great occasions but I always think that it’s a bit of a shame that it will be a group of people who are never all going to get together again, however much fun the wedding and attendant celebrations are.  So various people began to leave during the week for home via Pisa or Bologna airports and Louise went to Certaldo station for her continuing journey to Sienna and Rome  While we stood on the station with her I realised that no platform tickets are now required and when did anyone last see a railway porter?  I suppose it’s a job that has gone the way of the chariot wheel maker.  As the only ones driving home we were offered all sorts of self-catering supplies which were now superfluous to requirements, alcohol, soft drinks, pasta, tomatoes and the like.  Packing the van was a bit like putting away someone else’s supermarket shopping.

We now had to rush home in just under two weeks and so we continued taking our time with the City theme by going to Pisa, staying on a really good site which was only 800 metres from the famous leaning tower.  We arrived about 10.00 to find two people manning Check Out and one manning Check In.   In Italy people turn up at any time to book in on sites and I’ve seen outfits arriving at 8.00 in the morning.  In Britain, there’s always a time limit such as not before midday.  There’s nothing for the site to do that a hotel must do, like preparing individual rooms.  If there’s a space on a caravan site, there’s a space.  So who’s offering Customer Service here?  I might suggest this approach in a stiff letter to The Caravan Club just to cause a few heart attacks.  For those of you unfamiliar with the prison guard rejects who apply the Caravan Club rules, they are just too far up their own exhaust pipes.

Campsites are good for people watching because so much of the activity is outside and fairly close.   People arriving on a site never wave but sometimes a real extrovert might just nod slightly.  When they leave, a wave is a regular occurrence because the danger is then past.  If anyone waves on arrival the danger is that they might want to talk!   Chinwaggers, no thanks.   Among the many differences between British and Continental sites is that in Britain we generally have static/mobile home/trailer parks and we have touring sites but here in mainland Europe many sites are mostly statics with a few touring pitches.  This gives them a forlorn appearance when out of high season and mostly empty and makes them crowded raucous places in high season.  The statics tend to be close, they’ll have extra wooden bits built on, there will be tarpaulins and plastic sheeting.  In fact many sites look like refugee camps but with geraniums.

Now the amazing thing about Pisa is that the Cathedral appears to be finished!   Actually it is quite amusing that what must be the most well known and iconic Italian sight is a result of a building botch-up.  We’ve all seen pictures of the tower but as you turn into the Cathedral area through a gateway and see the impossible angle the thing is leaning at, it is also impossible not to be very impressed.   For 18 Euros you can climb to the top.  The Tower began to lean before it was finished and has moved gradually ever since at approximately 1 millimetre a year.  In the 1990s some remedial work was undertaken and it now leans half a metre or so less than 30 years ago.  The Baptistery, The Cathedral and the Campanile (for such is the Leaning Tower) all stand in a very attractive grassy area devoid of tourist tat, so applause for that.  The Cathedral is very light inside and huge and like many cathedrals wildly over the top in decoration.  Ditto the Baptistery.  All these buildings are tremendously impressive but as we were leaving the Baptistery, the guard suddenly called out “quiet”.  A woman walked to the centre and sang, not words just sounds and the acoustics just had to be heard to be believed.  As she finished, turned and walked down two or three steps the last notes were still echoing around the building.  We just happened to be there at the right time.  The Cathedral area was heaving with people and I realised that us humans are really just the mammalian version of Japanese Knotweed.  The rest of Pisa is worth seeing but it doesn’t have the ancient centre like so many of the towns.  I mean it’s probably only 400 or 500 years old. 

Continuing our train adventures we took a train from Pisa to Lucca to visit one of the real beauties among old Italian Cities.   There are two stations in Pisa, one very close to our site and one two miles away at the southern side of town.  Lonely Planet and scrutiny of the old interweb meant that we had to cycle to the southern end, just missing the 9.20 which was at Platform 1 West, not Platform 1 or Platform 1 East.  The ticket office had told us that the 9.50 had been cancelled so we had an hour wait.  Then we noticed there were two trains listed for Lucca at 9.50, one cancelled, one not cancelled and it was leaving from Platform 1 (non-directional).  So off we trotted and there on Platform 1 (yes, OK, next to it) stood a train with a number on the side.  The indicator board said Platform 1 but it was a different number for the train.  “O bother” I said, or words to that effect.  An Italian man assured us that it was the correct train, so we got on.  At least we could spend the day somewhere.  Lucca as it turned out, and that station near the campsite, well that was its first stop.  Ho, ho.  

Lucca was a treat.  Complete city walls still encircle the old town, the Cathedral was being repaired (although we called in later to see the Tintoretto – it’s a painting) and most of the old town was traffic free.   Lucca has a famous tower, the Torre Guinigi.  It’s medieval, stands over a hundred feet high and has seven oak trees planted at the top.  Well, why not?  Apparently when the Lucchese Big Cheese, Paolo Guinigi died in 1432 all the leaves fell off the trees.  If they did I’d put good money down as a bet that he died sometime in what we now know as autumn or fall if you must.  We went up a different tower so we could see it and Torre Guinigi does look splendid with the trees on the top, especially draped in a huge Italian flag as it was when we were there.   The city also has a very beautiful and unusual oval Piazza.  The Piazza Antiteatro as its name suggests stands on the site of the Roman Amphitheatre and it is very easy to imagine that the various entrances to the piazza are the old entrances to the arena floor.  Remarkably, our train journey back was unremarkable.

Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.  The phrase is attributed to a number of people such as A A Milne but not as yet to that loudmouth Irish singer Bono, the man named after a dog biscuit.  Anyway after that gratuitous insult I can say that I had been sitting and thinking one of those inconsequential things.  Having noticed the varying sizes of bricks used in all these old cities I got to wondering what measuring system was used in Italy pre-decimal days.  For the brick aficionados amongst you the local bricks are no more than 2 inches high but are sometimes up to 18 inches or so long.  I don’t know about the depth because they’re all embedded in ancient walls and I understand the authorities take a dim view of wall destruction even for important research purposes.  Heather says she sometimes wonders what goes on in my head.  So do I sometimes.  Anyway, I digress.  It was remarkably simple to discover the measurement systems used by checking the internet and one search was all it took, although reduced to libraries and books it might have taken weeks to find the information.  It seems that different cities and provinces had their own measuring systems, which might go some way to explaining why that famous tower is leaning. 

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