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Day 43: Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Tirrenia (Pisa), Italy
Where the Hell Are We - Lost Again
It was cool in the morning, warmed up to 21°
during the day and went down to 10° by bedtime. We started the
day with a delicious complimentary breakfast. We had to walk
two blocks to the other building and go up 3 stories to the lobby of
our hotel to find the breakfast room but it was worth it as they had
a huge variety of food for breakie. We then went back to our
room and packed up. We had to walk two blocks east to Hertz to
pick up our last rental car. Because we would be dropping off
the car in Paris, they charged us $500 for a drop-off fee.
When we pointed out that the car we were getting had French plates,
they said it didn't matter. As rental cars were at a premium
we had no choice but to be ripped-off.
While I got the car, Kathryn went
back to get the luggage. Our room was on the 4th floor and, if
you remember, the elevator was very tiny. She was going to
bring down two suitcases and wait until I arrived with the car.
Parking was at a premium around the hotel. The streets in this
area are all one way and, although it was only a couple of blocks
from Hertz to the hotel, Ken ran into serious road construction and
more one way streets. With memories of Scotland in his head,
he finally spotted a sign for the train station and managed to find
his way back to the hotel after the 12-block detour. He had to
park the car half on the sidewalk in front of the hotel because
there were no parking spots. A local bus driver gave Kenny a
"welcome to Florence" honk. While Ken loaded the first batch
of luggage - with help from an elderly Australian gentlemen who was
doing his laundry next door, Kathryn went back up for the rest of
the luggage.
We headed out of Florence through
the green rolling hills of Tuscany on the Fi-Pi-Li freeway
(short for Firenze-Pisa-Livorno). We drove through
Livorno, a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea, then continued up the
coast to Tirrenia. Tirrenia is a seaside suburb of Pisa
with a population of 3000 inhabitants. Most of the houses and
business are on the east side of the wide highway while the west
side is filled with beaches, summer cabins, restaurants, bars and
discos. We checked into the Hotel Riveria Blu, a lovely
place Kathryn had found on the Internet. We had to book a
reservation for in the hotel dining room which was served at 8:00
pm.
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After
checking in and dropping off our luggage, we made the 15 km trip
to Pisa. Like most famous monuments, it is more
breath-taking in person than in photos. Kathryn took the
photo of the Tower of Pisa at left. We then walked
across the Campo dei Miracoli or "Field of Miracles", to the
other side of the Tower. We took several photos from this
location but, somehow with the town's Duomo (Cathedral)
and Bapistry in the background providing optical illusions, it
did not look as if the Tower was actual leaning very much.
We stopped here for a delightful sausage sandwich and enjoyed
the warm sunshine while eating at a picnic table. After a
walk around the Piazza to check out the Duomo and Bapistry, we
went back to our car and drove 110 km back toward Florence to
drive along Chianti Road. You many wonder why we didn't
just do this out of Florence in the morning. We had so
much luggage and we didn't
want to leave it unattended in the car as we had heard that
luggage often gets |
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Leaning Tower
of Pisa. Ken is leaning on the fence in blue top and
shorts |
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stolen in Italy. Plus the drive back
through Tuscany was beautiful and relaxing. Chianti
Road, as the SS222 highway is known, twists and turns
narrowly through several small villages in the hilly terrain of
Tuscany's famous wine region.
Chianti
is the Italy that everyone dreams of visiting — cypress trees
leading to beautiful farm houses, hills lined with vineyards,
rustic wineries, and olive trees set atop rolling hills.
The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful but the roads were so narrow
we couldn't pull over to take photos.
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Tuscan scenery
on the Chianti Road |
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The Chianti Road is only 59 km long but, with the
hairpins turns, ups and downs and roads which narrowed to one
lane, it took us over two hours to reach Sienna at the
southern end.
Our original plan was to visit the ancient walled city at the
centre of Sienna but it was 6:00 pm by the time we got there and
we had that 8:00 pm dinner reservation about 175 km away.
We thought we would take a quick look at the walled city and be
on our way. Unfortunately we had arrived in rush hour
traffic and did not have a good map of Sienna, so we got lost on
the narrow one-way downtown streets filled with pedestrians.
We did manage to drive by the walled city. We got out of
the centre core and stopped at a gas station for directions.
Ken asked the Italian gentleman "Do you speak English?"
His reply was "No, do you speak Italian?" After a good
laugh, it turns out we were only a couple of blocks from the A1
freeway and we were on our way. We took the A1 to Poggo
Bonsi (I love this name) and then the 429 shortcut.
Lost: Kathryn was the navigator for our holiday and there
is nothing that she loves better than a good map - like the one
we bought in England which showed every little secondary road.
Unfortunately, because we were only going to be driving in Italy
for two days, all we had was an AMA map of Italy, Switzerland
and Austria. Also, Italian roads are poorly marked and
what few signs there are do not have highway numbers on them.
The 429 was a slow moving road and we saw a sign saying Pisa
pointing to the left so we decided to take it. Little did
we know that this was just a small secondary road. We
spent the next hour driving on winding roads in the dark in the
Italian country side. with no idea where we were.
Occasionally we would see cars on the Fi-Pi-Li freeway in the
distance or more signs for Pisa. We eventually found our
way to the freeway by luck and discovered that we were just 38
km from Pisa. We arrived 15 minutes late for dinner but
three other tables arrived after us so we didn't feel too bad.
The meal which cost 15€ was a feast. The appetizers were buffet
style and included several different vegetables and pizza.
The first course was pasta followed by a second course of sliced
roast pork. Their was a selection of desserts but we of
course had the ice cream. We were also given a litre of
bottled water and a half litre of red wine. This meal
would have cost 70€ or more in Rome. We went to bed with
full tummies. |
Click here for a slide
show of Day 43 photos.
Day 44
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