Europe Weekender - Italy3 - Florence

The traffic in the main road was blocked and we saw a huge demonstration escorted by Police (with helmet, shield and baton) ! What a welcome !

We quickly cross the road, got off the road to the cut roads, and walked to the hotel. It was a small hotel in 2^nd floor, run by a family. Checked in, left our luggage and came out. It was getting dark.

Walked back to the station, the demonstration has passed peacefully and life is back to normal. Had a coffee in one of the shops there, and then started our walk through the heart of the cultural part of the town. First to reach, was the Duomo (Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower), a building made in 15th Century. The exterior of this building made in Gothic style, is faced with marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white. This building as well has a baptistery and a campanile. This three buildings together standing in the historic centre of Florence, are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The whole place looked like an old World by itself… narrow streets, old buildings, stone paved roads…. It was still reasonably crowded, minvan-like buses plying around, which are the best possible public transport in these streets…

I felt it very similar to my experience in Udupi, where it is a normal town except you enters the heritage part of it! There, it is narrow streets, cows walking along with you…I felt that I am here on a pilgrimage!

But for Pranav, it was a hard day. He was getting really frustrated, started crying out of the extreme protest…And we were just getting helpless. We had just begun and this guy is not cooperating ! We at last settled him for a MacQueen magazine, after a reasonable amount of protest had already shown.

We walked to Piazza della Signoria. It is an L-shaped square( J ) in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (Old palace), the town hall of the city. This square more gives a feel of the Italian art with a dimly lit open museum with Michelangelo’s David, Hercules and Cacus, Perseus with head of Medusa, the rape of the Sabine woman and many other beautiful sculptures and the Fountain of Neptune in the middle of the square.

Then, it was time that we were also getting tired. We were planning to walk back to the hotel, and were planning dinner in one of the restaurants we had found in the street nearby. Time was around 7:30.

But instead of heading back, we took a wrong turn in the narrow maze, and were in another wonderful square, Piazza Santa Croce! This is another historic square in Florence, overlooking Basilica of Santa Croce; this is the place where famous Italians Michelangelo and Galileo are buried.

The square in front of the Basilica was full of chocolate stalls, a complete festive atmosphere. There was so much of variety in chocolates! Pranav was not keen, or rather his interest was focused on the candies, and he picked only the ones which has gelatin, specifically pork gelatin. I agree kids love it and he is no exception, but I take it as I have no other choice than to say no. We had to walk back quite quickly to the restaurants we were planning to have our dinner, as we saw many of the restaurants were closing by 8.

We had, again Penne Arabiatta and Italian pizza at a very traditional looking place, with wooden oven. Wood was cut beautifully and arranged all over to almost look like the restaurant has wooden walls J.

I was feeling like going back in to the Duomo square and just spend more time walking in these narrow streets, but my legs were not cooperating. We were back in hotel around 9:30 to end a long and hectic day.

Europe Weekender - Italy2 - Pisa

We started with our walk to Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of Miracles), which consists of the Duomo (Cathedral), the Campanile (the free standing Bell tower of the Cathedral), the Baptistery (of St.John) and the Campo Santo (meaning holy field). It looks nothing special for any other town centre, except for the fact that the free standing bell tower is a bit tilted. And, it is interesting because it is still standing with the tilt for last 800 years!

The walk was pretty eventless, except for a few observations. One, we felt as if we are walking through a University campus! We knew that it is student-dominated town, but not to the extent that we only see teenagers in groups or as couples. Then, we noticed the diversity in the small food shops selling cheaper. I was joking to Krithi that it won’t be a surprise if we find a biriyani shop… almost to even my surprise we saw one within less than ten seconds I made this remark

!It was clubbed with a Pita Shop, serving biriyani. We ordered for a falafel and a biriyani, as Krithi was pretty sure that we won’t get a biriyani even close to our taste or quality. She was right!

We continued our walk after lunch crossing the bridge across Arno.

It was more of an empty place afterwards, till we reached Piazza dei Miracoli. We also took a turn away from the straight route, walked through some empty areas, cross a fort, walked through some meadows and then back in to the main street leading to the world famous square, our destination for the day.

With the Sun shining, clear sky, the whole place looks marvelous! The famous Tower was covered from all angles, I was enjoying the architecture and works on the Baptistery as well. Then, the place was crowded as well, ironic to the empty streets we saw on our way! There was lot of Chinese groups, taking photos of holding the Tower, eating the tower, etc. One of them helped us to get a ‘normal’ picture of us three…

We spent a couple of hours there, and then took a bus back to the rail station. Collected our luggage from cloak room, and bought tickets for Florence from the counter. The clerk at the counter specifically told us to validate the tickets near the machine. It is a little odd practice. In Italy, all train tickets bought from the counter (not the ones booked in net with seat number and date on it) should be validated before entering the platform. If you are spotted in the train or even at the platform with out a validated ticket, you would be fined for ticket less travel.

I remembered an incident occurred to some of our colleagues caught and they were not aware of the validating tickets, were fined 60 Euros each (about 10 people). There, they ‘settled’ the ticket examiner for a 100 Euros ;).

We took train starting at 3:54.The train journey was a nice experience. In to the countryside of Italy, we quietly passed Navacchio, Cascina, Pontedera, San Ramano, San Miniato, Empoli, Montelupo, and Signa to reach a much-bigger-than-expected station, Florence SMN (Firenze Santa Maria Novella). Some aspects similar to traveling in India - small stations with dusty roads, the beggar with a card distributed to every passenger depicting his/her ‘misery’, ticket less travelers coming in and getting out. It was not crowded, again I would say there are many train journeys in India which are not crowded. We were passing through plains, then some hilly areas, reached Florence SMN (Firenze Santa Maria Novella) station around 5:15.

Out of the station, we walked to the hotel. It is a much bigger city than I thought. SMN station has bullet trains going to national/international destinations, has a reasonable good set of shops in the station building itself. A three-four lane bus bay in front of the station, and our hotel was 5 mins walk across the road just in front.

Europe Weekender - Italy1 - Pisa

We were done with the Rome trip, what followed was a horrible winter with a lot of snow pouring down unexpectedly in this part of Europe. It followed a white Christmas for people who managed to be back at home, but it was a ‘black’ Christmas for people who planned their flights to and fro Europe during this time. Lot of airports in Europe closed down due to the runways filled with snow… And this was because it was unusual and unexpected in these parts of the World to have so much snow in winter!

 I had no choice to travel anywhere till the winter ends…except looking at the Southern Europe, which will not be so bad in winter. Moreover Krithi and Pranav gone to US for 4 weeks left me with a lot of time to research and plan the trips.

I was browsing through the Ryan air rates for January, found 7 Euros tickets for Pisa and Venice! That means, another 5 Euros added for tax, three of us can fly both ways for 60 Euros! Even with the overhead of airport transfers on both ends, it will be 150 Euros… not very bad. I didn’t think too much, went ahead and blocked the tickets.

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There were three places planned – Pisa, Florence and Venice. One of the main reasons to choose this combination was, the first two are close by and Venice is reachable by bullet train in 2 hours from Florence.

Pisa is a place which is known for its Leaning Tower, and other than that there is nothing very special about it. It is like any other small town in Italy, with a huge student population. So it is not worth to just go all the way to just see the leaning tower and come back. You sit in a local train for an hour, you are in Florence.

Florence (Firenze in Italian), located on the banks of the River Arno, is famous for its history and especially its importance in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, its art and architecture and, more generally, for its cultural heritage.

And Venice, don’t need introduction.

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Our Pisa flight was at 10:30 from Charleroi Airport, which is 60kms away from Brussels. We started around 6:45, and got Charleroi shuttle bus from Brussels-Midi (maybe I would have mentioned before - Midi means South) railway station. It was the first time I was trying this option, location the place where the bus stops was a bit tricky. We missed the 7:30 bus by 2 mins. Then, we waited for 8 AM bus, to reach the airport by 8:45.

The airport was not crowded, even after being a Saturday! So we cleared the hurdles of air travel more quickly, but the airport staff used their extra time to do the checking twice or thrice to keep them busy, we just lost one moisturiser bottle saying the bottle can hold 150ml.

As usual, Pranav started asking for things (as usual) like he has been starving for many days, once we crossed the security check :). The flight took off on time at 10:30. It was a clear sky, and we could see Swiss from the flight, snowy mountains and trains moving like a worm in between them...

We landed in Pisa on time too, at 12pm. I was wondering how they flew us across charging 15 Euros for 3 people, all happening well on time !

There was police standing at the arrivals randomly (though it is not just ‘random’) checking the passports. A bus then to Pisa’s rail station, and kept our luggage in the cloak room there. It is rare to see a man-operated cloak room in Europe. In most of the places, I have seen unmanned cloak lockers with a simple automatic paying mechanism.

Rome Weekender 7

Day4 : It was a normal morning after an eventful night ! At breakfast in the hotel terrace, the maids were worried with Pranav’s situation. A couple of them spoke English – one was from Philippines talking about her son of the same age she had left behind for her to work in Rome. Pranav just like a hero sat between them explaining how it all happened in his ‘English’.

We walked to Republican square through some residential looking areas. We walked through some random streets, enjoying the Sun. Pranav was happy sitting on our shoulders and walking at times. After a 90 min walk, almost till Trevi fountain, we took a metro back to be back in hotel by 11:45.

Checked out around 12 and thought the same Brussels ‘jump’ principle will work in Roman metros, which allows you to travel one hour unlimited in metros, trams or buses for a jump. The Roman jump allows it only from metro to bus, not taking two metros once you have broken the journey and come out. So we ended up taking another ticket to otherwise walk-able Termini.

We took the airport bus to Ciampino at 12:30 and reached the small airport by 1:30. It was hot inside the bus, we were sweating! The trip till it crossed the city looked like India, with crowded roads, and a lot of people and the heat too!

We had lunch in the airport restaurant; there were couple of good pasta vegetarian choice. Then waited in the lobby after the security check. The queue for boarding started building up by 2:15 itself.

We also joined one of the ‘branches’ of what looked like a single queue! We waited in the ‘crowd-cum-queue’ till 3:30, no information of the flight getting delayed! The twist came when the flight was ready to board – they opened another boarding check desk, and half the crowd from back ran to the new desk! It was typical Indian situation that you will get a lucky entry!

Again, getting in as early as possible is important here as there is no seat number allotted. We were not prepared for that twist, but still managed to get three continuous seats.

The flight took off by 3:40, only a few minutes late. After all chaos, still I appreciate Ryanair for the things getting done quickly, still perfectly safe! We landed in Brussels Charleroi around 5:45. It was -4, and in the middle of heavy snow. It was another wrong decision to try a bus to Charleroi South railway station, and then get the train. The trains were late; we had to wait in the waiting rooms in the station for more than an hour. The train then took more time than usual to reach Brussels Central by 7:50. Our bus 63, then, to our home didn’t stop (he didn’t notice the stop-request button pressed or may be intentional?) in our stop. We ended up walking more than 400 metres back, in snow to end our journey!