Curious Llama in Italy Part One: Pisa

While back home in Canada the family farm was being flooded (worse than the flood of 73), I, blissfully unaware, was travelling around Italy. Robert turned 50 at the end of April and so wanted to spend that momentous/horrible day in Italy. We rented a house near Pisa. Our travels also took us to Bolongna, Trieste and, briefly, to Venice. Today's post is about Pisa. I arrived in Pisa a day before Robert.

Pisa looks like a typical northern Italian town. Above, you see of one of the older parts of town from the river. Arriving at the train station, you have to cross this bridge to get to the oldest part of town.

As you can see above, this is characterised by narrow cobbled streets.

Of course, when in Pisa, you have to go see the famous leaning tower.

I have seen the leaning tower before, many years ago. Then as this time, the first thing you think when you see it is 'cool, it really does lean'. Looking at the photo above, I don't think that I am shooting the photo on a horizontal line. I must have been unconsciously influenced by the lean of the tower. The tower used to lean 5 metres off the perpendicular. To stabilise this a bit, in 1998, the tower was wrapped in cables and attached to an A-frame. This held the tower in place while soil was removed from below the non-leaning side. This corrected the tower by 40cm and stabilised it.

As you can see above, you get a better idea of the lean if you look at the tower against something that isn't leaning. This is the cathedral.
Here is an aerial view of the tower, the cathedral and the baptistry (the round building behind the cathedral). The construction of the cathedral began in 1064. It is clad on the outside with strips of white and green marble.
Here is another view of the cathedral.
Inside, the cathedral is pretty unremarkable by Italian standards, except for the pulpit, which was carved by Giovanni Pisano in the 14th century. It took him 10 years to carve.
Here is a close up. This is only a small section. You can see why it took so long to carve. I guess that the church had a lot more money and craftsmen had a lots more patience in those days.

I was delighted to discover that the leaning tower was actually open!! The last time I was in Pisa, it was closed to visitors as they were still working on stabilising it. There are marble steps leading up to the top of the tower. It is a bizarre experience climbing into the lean. You need to put your hand against the wall in order to maintain a sense of balance.

The leaning tower, is, in fact, the bell tower for the cathedral. In northern Italy, it was the custom to have separate bell tower. Above is a close up of a bell, below is a wider view.

Once at the bells, you climb an even narrow stair case to get to the very top.
I spent the night in Pisa. For dinner that night, I had a half litre of house red wine, a bottle of mineral water and some pasta with a meat and tomato sauce (and all the bread you could eat). It cost me 10 euros (about 15 Canadian dollars). This is about £7, which would be a very good price for a meal out with wine in the UK.

Robert landed in Pisa the next day (he had a work thing the day before, but I came earlier because the plane ticket was cheaper (i.e. I paid £30 including tax (check out Ryanair.com to see the crazy prices you can get for travel in Europe on budget airlines))). We then headed towards a house we had rented in the hills above the town of Lucca, about 40 minutes from Pisa. Here is an aerial view of Lucca's famous central plazza (or piazza in Italian). Interestingly, quite a lot of the Italians who settled in Glasgow come from the Lucca area, more specifically, from the town of Barga, seen below.

Tomorrow, I will post more details on our house in the hills and Robert's 50th.