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.