Pisa, Gimignano – June 2, 2023
Jun 16th, 2023 by rallyadmin
Today were off to a small medieval town San Gimignano by way of Pisa. We’re up and ready to go but we have to wait until 8:30 AM for the rental office to open so that we can pay for the room and return the room key.
We walk over to the rental office and find that it doesn’t open til 9:30. fortunately, Barbara knocks on the door and a man who appears to be the manager comes to the door to tell us that the office doesn’t open until 9:30. We try to cajole him into opening and checking us out. He relents, unhappily, and processes the credit card. By the time he’s done with the check out he’s friendly and gives us a nice “Ciao!” on the way out the door.
Back to the apartment. Drag the luggage down stairs. Go to the garage. Load the car. And we’re off. Kind of. More like weaving our way through the alleys in a car that’s almost too wide for the alleys. Back to the main drag through town and up on to the autostrada.
The ride on the autostrada is quite enjoyable. It all divided highway with 2 lanes in each direction and very little traffic. It’s a long chain of tunnels through the mountains and viaducts over the valleys between the mountains. The occasional exposed rebar in the concrete retaining walls doesn’t inspire much confidence in the viaducts (and the odd collapse doesn’t help much, either) but most of the tunnels are engineering works of art..
There’s the occasional slowdown where the road compresses to one lane for construction or repair but the driving couldn’t be easier. I assume in July or August, the big holiday months for Europeans, things might be completely different.
Then into Pisa. Pisa is a large city but Google Maps and Android Auto take us right to the medieval center of Pisa and the famous Leaning Tower. Right to one of the gates in the battle wall that surrounds the ancient city, in fact.
We follow a sign to a public parking area that has space and when we park the hunt starts for the parking ticket machine. All of the parking spots are outlined with blue paint meaning that there is a charge for parking here. But on the way in, the gates are all up and entry and exit is wide open. I ask a man that we have parked next to and he tells me that because today is Republic Day, parking is free. To confirm, an old man who is sitting next to the parking ticket machine again tells us that today parking is free.
We take some water and one of the hiking sticks that I brought and head off to the gate and the biglietteria. There may be free parking but admission to the buildings in the old city isn’t free. It may be Republic Day but the Republic isn’t stupid. We enter the old city through the gate and immediately to the left is the iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The view of the Tower jars the senses. The Tower appears to lean so much that it seems to defy gravity by not falling over. I’ve seen the documentaries on how the Tower was saved from collapse, the engineering and subterranean work that has been done to stop the Tower from collapsing but looking at the Tower from where we entered, the Tower looks like it will fall any second, engineering be damned!
Of course, the Tower isn’t really the main reason for this site to exist. The Tower was built next to a huge cathedral which really should be the center of attention. It isn’t but it should be.
We but our tickets and tour the Battistero di San Giovanni and the Cattedrale di Pisa, both of which are magnificent by any standard. The truly remarkable thing is that there are so many people here. I thought that we were ahead of the tourist rush but the tour organizers are finding people everywhere and bringing them here.
We don’t bother climbing to the top of the Tower. I’m sure that the view is breathtaking but my knee won’t care about the view and we really want to walk the wall that surrounds most of the old city. After touring the cathedral we find the access to the wall (another ticket) by asking for directions. (By the way, I want that duly noted: that we asked for directions. Random wandering, my usual method, wasn’t getting us up on the wall.)
The woman selling the tickets tells us to go down to the end of the wall, a few hundred meters, to get the best photos of the Tower and the cathedral. And then come back to walk the rest of the wall.
Along the way we pass the old Jewish cemetery and get to the end of the wall. She’s correct. You can take picture postcard shots of the Tower and the cathedral and any combination thereof. We get the shots and start back. As we pass the ticket kiosk again, we stop to ask the woman which is the best exit off the wall to get back to where our car is parked. She shows us on a map which access and we start walking to that access.
And we walk. And we walk. And we walk. We walk so far the we can’t even see the light towers of the football stadium that we are parked next to. That’s really okay because we are headed to see a large mural painted on a building across the river from the old city. And we walk. And walk some more.
We finally get to the access point which is much farther along the wall than we had anticipated and drop down off the wall to the city streets just outside the wall. We guess at the direction to go and cross the river. Pass through a small park and then walk a couple more blocks to a large piazza searching for the mural.
We finally find the mural on a side street just off the piazza facing a small restaurant. The mural is quite large and interesting. The mural, Tuttomonohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuttomondo, was done by the American artist, Keith Haring, in 1989. Sadly, Mr. Haring died of AIDS related complications in 1990 with this mural being his last public mural before his death.
We head back to the piazza and start looking for a restaurant for lunch and a break after the forced march along the old city wall. We find a nice little restaurant on the pedestrian mall and Barbara finally has some soup (rather than pasta) that she really likes. Then back to finding the car.
We walk in the general direction of the old city and cross back over the river. At the next intersection there’s a sign pointing us to the Tower. WE walk up the road until we see a Parking sign pointing us toward the football stadium and in a few minutes we’re back at the car. What was going to be a short stop to see the tower and move on has turned into a much longer stay. On to Gimignano.
The drive to Gimignano follows the autostrada for a ways but then drops on to the provincial two lane highways. The country side is now almost all farmland with large rolling fields of wheat yet to be harvested. We’re headed for a rural B&B and it’s going to be interesting to see what a rural B&B is out here in this farmland.
I’ve getting getting texts from the B&B owners asking when we expect to arrive but when I reply to the texts my texts bounce for some reason known only to Google and the international internet conspiracy, err, industry. Finally, as we drive up a long hill, Android Auto says that we’re close to our destination and then suddenly announces that we have “arrived at our destination” which is news to us because there isn’t a building in site. We continue up the road to turn around and on the way back down the hill we see a small road off to the side. We take the left hand turn and find a couple of older people working on the side of the road. We ask them if they can direct us to the address we show them on our reservation email from Booking.com. They chuckle and point us to the house just above us on the driveway that we have stopped in front of.
We smile and thank them (mille gratze), back up and head up the driveway. The owners of the B&B who had driven up to the house just ahead of us are waiting for us. We park and the owners take us for a tour of the apartment.
The building is an old two story Italian country house that has been in the man’s family for generations. The apartment is old and a bit rustic but everything that we need is relatively new and clean. This will do just fine, thank you. And the view across the road to the hills is pure Italian country side.
We unload the car and drag the luggage up he stairs. I’m not sure why we’re doing this. All we really need is toiletries and a change of clothes. That done, back in the car and into San Gimignano for some dinner.
It’s only a short drive up he hill to the town proper but since an old medieval, walled city cars are not allowed in the town and must be parked in one of the many parking lots built around the outside of the walled city on the slopes that fall away in every direction.
It seems that every lot we come to is already filled and closed off. Around the front of the city and down the side. A couple of small restaurants that already look full bit there’s no available parking any way. We keep heading down the hill wondering how far we’ll have to walk back up to the town.
At the next intersection we take a right and find parking lots on both the right side of the road directly under the city wall, already filled. But another to the left is open and we pull in and start looking for an open spot. Nothing on the top level. Down to the second level. Nothing. Down to the third level. Nothing. Finally at the bottom of the lot we find some open spots. Park and head back up through the parking lot to the road.
With no idea about how to get into the city we start walking back up the road toward the front gate of the city. Just as we start up I notice some people coming down a staircase from the upper wall. We turn and head that way and find an elevator at the bottoms of the stairs. Beam me up, Scotty.
We come out of the elevator outside the wall and follow a group of women up the walkway a bit and then turn to the left through a small archway through the wall into the city. We walk a few blocks and as we cross a side street we can see some musicians playing outside next to a small restaurant. That’ll work. We walk in and ask for a menu.
We’re pleasantly surprised. After searching for a parking spot, we end up actually pretty close to the car thanks to the elevator and the street musicians who lured us up the side street. The meals is good but the music is really the best part of the meal.
The musicians are Fabio Balzano who is the singer and guitar player and another guy playing percussion on a miked box using bother his hands and snare brushes. The guitar player/singer looks surprisingly like a young Bob Dylan though his songs are closer to euro-ballads than Dylan ever was. But they are pretty good.
After we finish the mean and they take a break, we get up to leave and stop by the players to give them a tip. It turns out that they have a CD available for sale so instead of a tip we buy the CD and compliment them on the set they just finished.
I tell him that he reminds me of a young Bob Dylan but he’s not impressed and maybe a bit irritated by the comment. Of course, the player is young and Bob Dylan is in his 80’s so he may not even know who Dylan is. We leave him with more praise and head back to the car.
Through the small opening in the city wall, down the elevator, across the street and down to the bottom of the parking lot. In the car and back down the hill to the rural B&B. It’s been a long day. Tomorrow morning the San Gimignano old city and then on to Siena.
Obi-wan