Pisa

 April 4th

We both woke refreshed ready for our trip to Pisa. But first we wanted to plan our route to follow the coast as much as we could as we felt a little cheated yesterday. The first stop was to be Lerici. But still not used to the poor “Road Closed” warnings in Italy, we arrived within 10 km of our first destination only to find a bridge under repair and AGAIN no detour instructions. So we doubled back and found the main SS1 road to take us to Marina di Massa, which is on the coast and where we stopped for coffee, then onto Pisa.

On arrival at Pisa we went to a  McDonald’s to see if we could get free wifi only to find that it was only available to customers with a Italian sim card. As we both had emails to send we decided to change our plans and stay in Pisa only one night so we can sort out wifi for the following night.

For now our focus was on a) finding our camp site and b) finding the home of an architectural project gone terribly wrong: The Leaning Tower and its neighbours found in the Campo dei  Miracoli (Field of Miracles). The camp site was easy, we just followed the signs. The Campo dei Miracoli proved more difficult as it had no signage (we seemed to have entered the town from the non-tourist side).

We stumbled across an aqueduct just outside where we parked the van so we decided “this is old” so it must lead us to the old city and the Campo. Eventually, with the added assistance of a German tourist we found the medieval bell tower and the Campo dei Miracoli. It all looked so clean and well-manicured. It was a stunning site and one we had both desperately wanted to see. We were originally going to go up the tower but we decided that it was the lean that had the draw and not the view from the top so we just explored the grounds, the Baptistery, outside of the Camposanto and wandered into the Duomo to admire the black and white marble tiers and historic paintings. On our way back we walked up to the river and down to the Pizza dei Cavalieri which is the centre of medieval Pisa. Back to the van and reality, service van, blog and supper.