Lepod's Blog

After a happy day at the Vespa Museum, we all hopped in the car and drove to James’ hotel in Pisa, which was up a very narrow one way street and I had great difficulty extracting the car after we’d dropped off our luggage. Anyway, we had a rest and then walked to the Piazza del Duomo to look at the famous tower. It really is a lot more impressive in real life than in photos. You cannot easily see in the photos how much it’s leaning. Well worth the look, and indeed all the buildings in the square are beautiful.  The tower is a freestanding bell tower for the cathedral, building was commenced in 1173 and it started leaning in 1178, as the foundations were insufficient, and the subsoil is unstable.  The cathedral itself looks a bit wobbly in places, but it is very impressive nonetheless. We then proceeded to find a suitable cafe and had a pleasant dinner sitting outside and watching the world go by, often driving Piaggio Apes!

Florence – the next day we decided to drive through the country rather than on the autostrada, as it’s not far from Pisa to Florence and the Tuscan countryside is rather attractive. So we headed up into the hills and found a nice little village for lunch, then on to Florence. We stopped to take some pictures of the olive trees.

As you can see, it was a beautiful day. It was James’ idea to avoid the autostrada, he was a great guy to travel with, full of good ideas.

Then we were running out of the foothills and into Florence itself. The driving immediately had my full attention as the traffic was quite chaotic, scooters passing us from left and right, five lane roundabouts, colourful Italian driving everywhere,  and we had some difficulty finding our little bed and breakfast place. However, once we’d settled in and found our bearings, we walked into the old town.

The Cathedral is enormous, very hard to take pictures of as it won’t all fit. There were a lot of tourists and it was very crowded and busy. There are many squares filled with ancient churches, magnificent mansions belonging to the Medici family, the city is absolutely stuffed full of art galleries and museums. However, after a while what took James’ fancy was a wine festival that we bumped into, so we paid our money and got a ticket each, and queued up at the tents set up around the city for wine tasting.  A couple of photos:

There’s a famous bridge across the river with shops on it, so we had a look at that, then after a rest back at the B&B we went looking for our dinner. And here we had a real piece of luck. Hidden away up a side street (Via delle Belle Donne) we found the Osteria Belle Donne, a wonderfully authentic rather rustic place run by two outrageously flamboyant, friendly guys.  (An Osteria traditionally was the least formal type of  Italian restaurant, James recommended we should go to one and we are very glad that we did.) Anyway, from the outside it looks rather basic, once inside it has a single room, very artistically decorated with vegetables, ancient postcards, movie posters, art, empty magnums of wine etc.  The first night we elected to sit outside on the porch.

The food was fantastic, things like Osso Bucco (braised veal shanks), arugula salad with pecorino and artichokes, eggplant Parmesan and roasted chicken with peppers, stuffed rabbit, but I had Porchettino al’Olio al Fromaggio del Grutto which is suckling pig with artichokes and mushrooms. Yum yum!

The next day, James had to fly back to NZ, but first we all climbed up the inside of the big brown dome you can see in my picture of the Duomo, as there’s a fabulous view from the top. Quite a climb up very narrow stone stairs, but great views of the inside of the dome, and then you get to the cupola and step outside – amazing! A little bit nerve wracking too.

Pauline and I looked around the city a bit more that day, we got a bit burned out because you couldn’t turn around without seeing some 11th century church or priceless artifact etc. In the evening, we went back to the Osteria for a rapturous welcome from the owners, and another excellent meal washed down with some Chianti. The next morning we visited the Institute and Museum of the history of Science, which unfortunately was mostly closed for renovations, however we did get to see several of Galileo’s telescopes, also one of his fingers! And there were some scientific instruments on display, some astrolabes, plenty of telescopes, however I would like to return there some time. And then it was time to head out of Florence, as we wanted a break from large cities, and off to our romantic Tuscan Villa.