We decided to go to Pisa, Italy for an overnight. Technically, this is the Tuscany region, although what we saw wasn't necessarily what you would expect from what you've seen in the movies. It was pretty flat, although there was lots of farming and other agricultural endeavours.
It's only about a 4-hour drive from here. The weekend started out with a bit of difficulty. When we picked up the car on Saturday morning, the woman at the car rental place completely screwed up our reservation, and ended up giving us this huge Ford Mondeo station wagon. (I normally request the smallest car they have.) Plus, she couldn't seem to figure out how to process the rental, and it took us an hour to get out of the shop.
Now, most people would wonder why it would be a problem to have a bigger car. Well, it's mainly because these cities are hundreds of years old, and many of the streets are barely wide enough for one car. Plus, gas being so expensive here, it costs a small fortune to fill the tank. We are now partial to small cars (well, I am anyway).
So we set out from Antibes for the drive, and had no problems. Until we got to Pisa. And it took us 45 minutes to find the hotel. Firstly, because the directions from our hotel were crap. Secondly, because a river runs through the middle of the town, and there are tons of one-way streets. The bridges are one way also! So if you're on the wrong side of the river, going the wrong direction, you are, as we say, foo-ked. We stopped at one point to ask a very nice Italian policeman, who spoke just enough English, and he got us going in the right direction.
Our hotel was down one of these little tiny streets in the middle of the town, which was nice, but we had to fold in the side mirrors on the car to get down part of the street. Once we checked in and dropped off our bags, we walked up to the tower complex, stopping for a life-sustaining gelato on the way.
The tower is quite amazing. And it leans. (You've heard this?) But we didn't go up into it. Nor did we go into the duomo or the baptistry, although the marble carving is amazing. We also refused to take the famous photo of ourselves "holding up" the tower.
Yep, it leans.
Even from a distance.
So we walked around the tower complex for a while, and then spent some time walking around the town. That night, we had a nice dinner at a little restaurant on a piazza, and ended up paying too much for our bottle of wine due to a "technicality" that the waiter neglected to tell us. Unaware tourists - 0. Somewhat-less-than-honest waiter - 1.
We got up the next morning and left after breakfast. We managed to get out of the town in about 5 minutes, which was funny considering how long it took us to get IN.
The marble carving was pretty amazing.
We drove to a little town about 20km up the road called Lucca. We liked Lucca. (and no, it doesn't live on the 2nd floor...) Being Easter Sunday, we figured it would be pretty dead, but when we got there, it was hopping. The town is unique, because it still has the entire city walls intact. They've made a park on top of the walls (they're probably about 20 yards wide) and there were lots of people out walking, riding bikes, etc. Lots of bike rental shops in the town, too.
Kevin in the park on top of the walls.
There are some amazing marble cathedrals in the town, and it just had a really nice vibe to it. It's hard to explain. Sometimes, you go to a place and get a certain feeling from being there, good or bad. (Lucca - good. Pisa - not so much.)
More fantastic carved marble on the front of the cathedral.
We spent a couple of hours walking around just looking at the town. There was more open than we had expected, so it was nice to see all the people out and about. We'd like to go back there sometime, when everything is open, to check it out. Maybe another overnight.
The Piazza Anfiteatro - it's a circle
The drive home seemed to take forever. Although the motorway goes through Carrara, which is the famous marble manufacturing place in Italy. There are big yards with huge marble blocks all over the place. And you can see in the mountains where they're carving it away.
Gorgeous wisteria, in bloom all over Lucca
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