Tuscany Part 2

Thankfully, escaping Siena by car proved much easier than getting there. We had a more general target ("not siena") which helped. Our next destination was the hill town of San Gimignano. In the old days, when all of the towns in Tuscany were battling each other, rich families would build towers to protect their stuff (and selves) from rival towns and families. San Gimignano still has a dozen or so of these towers, though it originally had sixty four.

We found it quite engaging, despite being pretty solidly built around tourism. The town is centered on one main street, with several piazzas strung along it like closely packed pearls. At the top of the town is an old fort which has been converted to a park that affords lovely views of the skyline.

As in Rome, it was not uncommon to come across cats wandering the streets in Tuscany. This fella had laid claim to the bench we ate lunch on in Sam Gimignano. We also had a pair that seemed to live on the roofs of the buildings next door to our hotel in Florence, and it was fun to check on their comings and goings.

If a town has towers, that can only mean one thing: Stairs! This is the view over San Gimignano from the tower of the civic museum. The museum itself had extensive displays all about local saint Santa Fina. When we asked about her story, the person commented that she could tell us all about her in Italian, but less so in English. From the discussion, she appears to have rescued someone that fell from a roof and also some sailors. Or something.

This is another view from the civic tower, looking down on one of the piazzas. It was a neat little town, and we both very much enjoyed the visit.

Next up was Volterra. Our guidebook commented on what a great town it was, so we had somewhat inflated expectations. Sadly, the bulk of our time there was on a Tuesday, when most of the interesting stuff seemed to be closed.

One of the big draws of Volterra is their Etruscan museum and arch. The museum was closed Tuesday, of course, but at least the arch was open. The amorphous blobs in the arch were originally heads, but thousands (yes, thousands) of years of wear hasn't been kind to them. Locals claim that this arch (and those like it) taught the Romans how to build arches with keystones. During World War Two (when Italy was on the wrong side, recall) the retreating Nazis wanted to destroy the arch to slow the advance of the Allies. To save it, locals tore up all the stones from the street and piled then in the opening, preventing folks from getting through and saving the arch. And helping the Nazis. So....it's...a win? History is weird.

Another neat historical site in Volterra is the ruins of a Roman amphitheater. For years, this was used as the city's garbage dump to the point where they forgot it existed. This lead to quite a discussion between Mary and me about how one loses an entire amphitheater. Again I say, history is weird. The theater itself was closed during the off season (which we were just at the tail end of) but you could see it very well from the road that runs along the city wall. It was surprisingly well preserved. I guess garbage is a good insulator.

This is the main drag of Volterra where many cute little shops and artisans are. The local specialty is alabaster, and there are a ton of places to buy it. I kept eying lamps with alabaster shades, but in the end was afraid that they wouldn't survive the trip home. Volterra was by far the sleepiest of the cities we visited. The streets were pretty empty during the day, but they were absolutely desolate in the evening. We ate dinner at a place our guidebook suggested, and for the entire meal were the only patrons there. Very odd. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was the weakest meal of the trip (though certainly not horrible.)

After spending the night in Volterra, we set off to find our way to Pisa. We were doing so well -- We found the signs to Pisa; We followed the signs to Pisa; We were on the brink of escaping the city...and our road was closed. On the bright side, this really made us realize how much more comfortable with Italian we were this time around. We managed to ask three different people for directions and mostly understand the responses. We weren't able to apply those directions to actually escape, mind you, but we understood them more than we expected.

While Pisa is primarily known for the leaning tower, the entire piazza surrounding it is pretty neat. It's referred to as the field of miracles and it has the Duomo, the campanile (that'd be the leaning tower), the baptistery, and a few other sights. While the campanile gets all the press, everything in the field is leaning one way or another. The picture above is the outside of the duomo, and this shot is from inside. It was one of the rare buildings that actually allowed pictures to be taken inside.

And here it is, in all it's leaning glory. We saw several folks taking the "holding up the tower" shot, though only later did I think I should have gotten one of me pushing it over. Maybe I'll Photoshop myself in later. We had originally planned on climbing it, but we were running a bit late so in the end we did not.

This a back door to the duomo. We are suckers for a good door. This one was interesting to us because rather than a heavy Renaissance influence, it was very Byzantine. Since the trip had been so very about the Renaissance, this was a neat change.

And here is the baptistery. The acoustics inside were amazing, causing sounds to hang in the air long enough that one person (a security guard, in our case) could sing a three note chord with themselves. So neat. The building also has what looks like a dilapidated roof, which is in fact a lead roof. This is fancier than the terracotta tiles that are more common in the region, but prone to melting when on fire. This happened during world war two to the neighboring covered graveyard, causing a huge amount of damage to it.

This picture is surely revenge for all the times I have gotten Mary mid-action. Here I am looking at the book, planning a quick snack to grab on the way out of town.

Pisa straddles the Arno river. The river itself has a very Venice feeling, though it's pretty limited to just the buildings lining the Arno looking like those that line the Grand Canal. The trip out of Pisa was full of adventure, as always. There is a lot of very urban modern city built up around the old town, and we didn't see very many signs pointing us towards our next destination (or really, any destination that we could find on the map.) We eventually wandered our way to the train station and from there to the proper road, but I'd be lying if I claimed we never saw the same stretch of road twice.

Next up after Pisa was Lucca, which lies just to the North. One of the fun things about being closer to the coast is that the climate allows for citrus trees. We were very taken with Lucca, and when we came across this little square (literally named the little plaza of oranges) I couldn't help but be charmed. And goofy, apparently.

Lucca is primarily known for its wall. Most of the Tuscan towns had walls during medieval times. These walls were generally thick enough to keep out invaders, but not thick enough to remain useful when cannons entered the picture. In Lucca, rather than ditch the walls, they dedicated several years of taxes to cannon-proofing. This resulted in a wall that is thick enough that these days it's an elevated park that circles the city.

The wall is an amazing place to stroll, and we found ourselves drawn back to it repeatedly during our several day stay there. There is a main path along the center of it, but then many wider grassy areas at the corners where fortifications used to be. It's immensely charming and really made it feel like a place we could live. Lucca was by far our second favorite destination after Siena.

The duomo in Lucca has several neat features. First, all of the columns on the facade are in different styles (which is neat or silly, depending on if you ask me or my wife.) Second, the statue of the saint on top not only has bronze wings, but he is also rigged to flap them on special occasions.

Can you spot the chair in this room? While we loved Lucca, our hotel room did have a very...unique charm. We overlooked a nice large (yet still quiet) piazza though which increased the charm quite a bit.

Here is a shot of the walls from outside. As part of keeping the town defensible, they cleared out land at the base of the walls as well. This adds even more green space to the town.

While most of the towns that we visited had some form of tower (or many of them, in San Gimignano's case) Lucca has one with a unique feature: It is topped with planters filled with trees. It was quite enchanting, even after having done so many stair climbs already.

This is the piazza that our hotel room overlooked. It was huge and open and had surprisingly few restaurants on it. There was a carousel tucked into one corner, though it was unclear if that was there for a special event, or if it was a permanent fixture. Lucca was definitely a less visited place, but we loved it. It was very easy to envision that people actually lived there, and to imagine ourselves doing the same some day. I may have picked up a half dozen real estate fliers while there, to the bemusement of my wife. It was friendly, not overly touristy, and so very charming to walk.

Our first stop was also our final: Florence. The drive back was fairly uneventful, but finding the airport proved to so much more difficult that it should have been. You'd think that there would have been a hundred obvious signs, but we must have managed to miss them all. When the google directions include a U Turn, you know you are in deep, deep trouble. By the time we got to the area where we saw signs to the airport, we were so stressed (per usual when driving in Italy) that we were very happy to pay them to fill the tank. The sooner out of the car, the better. In fact, we we so very done with driving that we totally neglected to take a picture of it. Oh well.

After visiting so many smaller towns, Florence seemed absolutely enormous to us upon our return. We stayed in the same hotel as we had the first time through town, so we managed to keep our bearings fairly well. We used our remaining time to visit some of the larger sights and some of the areas of town we hadn't hit on the first pass. This is a shot from the courtyard of Santa Croce. It was a nice church with an associated leather working school, oddly.

Santa Croce had two kind of funny tombs, if such a thing exists. The first was this one of Galileo who, as you may know, was excommunicated by the church for heresy. Apparently both parties resolved their differences.

The other amusing tomb is this one of the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante, who was banished from Florence for his political views. In this case, the parties did not resolve their differences -- the tomb is empty because he is buried elsewhere.

Our last days in Florence were quite lovely, and I felt like now that no additional destinations were ahead of us we really slowed down. We walked to a few different areas, and sampled as many gelatos as we could fit in. We got blueberry and pear (from two different places) and both were amazingly good, bursting with real fruit flavor. This shot is of the Palazzo Vecchio (the old palace) which sits on one of the major piazzas of Florence. It has a museum inside, though we didn't manage to see it due to it being closed for a special event when we were there.

It was odd to us how many places would not allow photography inside, though no place was more surprising than the sculpture museum. We could get pictures in the courtyard, but not inside. I guess those giant hunks of stone are very light sensitive. Still, we got to see a ton of neat sculpture inside, which we're fans of.

Of all the doors we saw in Tuscany, this one (on the baptistery in Florence) was the best. It's no surprise, since when the door was commissioned, they had a contest amongst all of the artisans of the time to design the door. The winning design really is a marvel of Renaissance style. The amount of detail and perspective that they put into reliefs that are only inches deep really is astounding.

In the end, both Mary and I were sad to be leaving Tuscany. We ate a lot of great food, walked a lot of wonderful streets, and had a marvelous time all around. There are definitely a bunch of places we are already excited to return to (Siena, Lucca, Florence) and a few that we feel we have done. I think that next time we would probably change our transportation plan (the driving was just way more stressful than we need when on vacation) but I am glad that we got to see some of the more far flung towns. I am absolutely certain that we will return to the area again, and so immensely glad that we made the trip.