Last night we went to Giglio's again for dinner across the road.
Our flat is half the middle floor of this large building in the photo below. You can see that it is built right up to the road with no room for pedestrians.
Before he took our order for dinner our waiter wanted to show us his kitchen garden.
He was so proud of it. We gave him a tiny brooch as we paid our bill and he identified it as a koala. He pinned it on his shirt straight away.
After we had eaten a plantain for breakfast (it tasted OK), we left a card and a magnet with a drawing of a joey on it to thank Daniele. We packed and crossed the road and his mother came out to give us a smile and a big hug. Such a nice family. We said in the card that this was the best apartment we had ever stayed in and we received an email tonight from Daniele saying his young daughter loved the magnet.
The little blue bus was full when we got on and two polite young people gave us their seats. The driver forgot to stop at the station again and we had to yell from the back to remind him.
The station was full of people heading to the Cinque Terre coast and the trains that way were packed to the doors. We were glad we had not put that on our tour list. We will get glimpses of it all again tomorrow as we go by train to Genoa and back.
Our train ride today was just an hour to Pisa and we sat next to a couple from Belfast, whom we had a good conversation with. We passed what we first thought were glacier covered mountains but they could not be around here. We realised it was a marble quarry and whole sections of the mountains were being cut away. Large blocks of marble were stored along the railway line, as well as crushed marble and granite. It went on for miles. It helped to explain why there are so many beautiful marble buildings around here.
We caught a taxi very easily to our accommodation, which this time is a cabin in a Camping Village for three nights. It is very basic, with no towels or blankets. We have a chamois for drying ourselves and the nights are not cold here. We found another train station close by (Pisa S. Rossore) and used it to go back to Pisa Centrale this afternoon as preparation for tomorrow's outing. It is covered by our Eurail pass and will be much quicker than walking.
When we got back to Pisa S.R. we found our way after some false starts to the old town where "The Tower" was. It turns out to be a small part of a very impressive setting consisting of four major marble buildings: the Dome, the Cathedral and a Sacristy or Monastery as well as the Tower, which was the least important from a church life point of view. There were big crowds of people filling the area, as you might expect on such a sunny day. At any one time there would be 50 or more people supporting or pushing the tower for a trick photo. The best photos would have been of the people going to silly lengths to get the unique snap. From certain angles it has no lean.
We paid 16 euros each for a ticket into the Tower for the group scheduled at 3:30pm and while we were waiting we toured the inside of the Cathedral, which once again had magnificent paintings and sculptures. Too many saints and popes for a nonconformist person.
We were allowed 30 minutes in the tower and found it was completely hollow inside except for the steps going around between the exterior and interior walls.
The floor inside had quite a slope on it but on the stairs you do not notice the tilt. There were 266 steps and it is 55 metres high. The marble steps are well worn from the thousand or more people going up and down each day. The main point of climbing was to see the city.
and the other buildings in the complex.
There were two or three bells that we were forbidden to touch. A preteen girl climbed up the iron ladder in the background in this photo and was severely reprimanded by an official. There was a clear sign in Italian and English which she had ignored.
There is a restaurant in the Camping Village and we had another nice Italian dinner.
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