Pisa

Italy.  If only we could fly for a mere 75 minutes and close out every year there.  

We’ve been travelling in Europe mainly by train, occasionally by bus, so it threw Lily for a bit of a loop to be going somewhere by airplane (Paris to Pisa).  She kept asking if we were flying to Calgary (some wishful thinking from our 5 year old about getting back on Canadian territory, I believe).  Lily did handle the disappointment of landing in Pisa, not Western Canada, very well though, as 3 steps out of the airport she stopped, looked around nodding her head and remarked, “This Italy.  It looks pretty good”.  

Despite Barry believing his English/French/Spanish hybrid talk could be substituted for beginner level Italian, we were lucky that most people we interacted with had a fairly good level of English and that they were willing to use it with us.

We took a taxi to  The Grand Hotel Bonanno in Pisa, arriving  in the late afternoon.  Restaurants open later here for the evening meal, 7:00 or 7:30 pm, so Barry left to try to find a little corner store to buy some snacks to tide us over until the dinner hour.  When he asked the hotel’s barman for directions to a spot where he could pick up some crackers and fruit, he was told it would be very difficult to find a place open as it was both a Sunday and a holiday in Italy.  However, he told Barry to wait a few minutes and disappeared into the hotel kitchen returning with a very yummy snack plate of melt-in-your-mouth-mozzarella, delicious ham and salami and a pile of bread sticks, on the house.  We sure appreciated the service  there; they also drove us in the hotel van to the leaning tower, to the train station the next day and gave the girls 2 baseball caps to boot!

Right after breakfast the next morning, (Who knew canned plums could be that delicious? Not me!  An unexpected breakfast highlight.), we headed straight to Pisa’s Cathedral Plaza.  Catching my first sight of the grassed plaza with it’s baptistery, cathedral, and famous bell tower, I was literally stopped in my tracks.  It was more impressive and beautiful than I had even expected, and it seemed hard to believe I was standing there after such an easy flight. 

The tower was closed to climbers from 1990-2001 as experts worked to decrease the degree of the lean.  They finally had success in 1990 after extracting tons of soil under the raised side.  Consequently and lucky for us, it can now be climbed once again.  Unfortunately, because of her age, Lily wasn’t allowed to climb (technically, neither was Grace, but we couldn't let one week stand in the way of a once in a lifetime ascent!), so Grace and I booked in for a half hour time slot to head to the top.  We marvelled at the well-worn and narrow marble staircase, imagining how many people must have climbed them before us over the centuries.  Grace’s favourite part was walking around on the fourth level where the lean was much more apparent than further up.  In 1360 during the last building phase, the construction was angled differently to try and compensate for the obvious lean, so you don’t get the same lopsided sense on top of the bell tower.

We also bought tickets to enter the museum Opera del Duomo with its ancient collection of statues, books, paintings  and other collections from inside the buildings it neighbours.  We crossed paths with only 2 other visitors, and it offered views of the tower from a very calm and pretty courtyard that for the most part we had to ourselves.  Well worth it!

Next, a train ride to Florence.