Excursion to Pisa

Monday 27 August 2007. We get up early to watch as the Island Star sails into the industrial port of Livorno in Italy. It's our second time here, as we did this same cruise last year. On that occasion we took a trip to Florence. This time we are taking an excursion to Pisa.

The famous tower is one of three buildings in a large grassed piazza, the Piazza del Duomo - the Cathedral Square. In addition to the cathedral and the tower, which is the cathedral's free-standing bell tower, there is the Baptistry. We'll see that in a little while.

The main basilica or cathedral (or duomo...) has some wonderful carvings including several Roman stones incorporated into it. The builders weren't all that bothered by which way up they should have been or whether the carvings faced the interior or exterior. This one, if you tilt your head to the left, has a carving of two Roman galleys passing a lighthouse.

Inside the cathedral it is equally as stunning. The lantern hanging from the ceiling is the very same one that was watched by choirboy Gallileo. He was astounded to find that no matter whether it swung a little or a lot, the swing from one side to the other took exactly the same amount of time.

He started to experiment with gravity, climbing to the top of the leaning tower (it has been leaning since soon after its first building) and dropping both heavy and light articles from it. He learned two things. One - that both light and heavy articles fell at the same rate. Two - that the heavy ones hurt more when hitting the top of someone's head after being dropped from the tower...

We come out again and take a look around. This is the Baptistry which also leans, but not as much as the tower. All the roofing tiles have been removed from this side, presumably to allow for roof maintenance.

Inside the Baptistry is a central huge font - the Baptists believed in total immersion. The floor of the Baptistry is raised slightly towards the font allowing spilled water to drain towards the edge of the building. There are a number of galleries which give a superb and prolongued echo. Our guide ushered us in before 11:00am and then shushed us with a strident "Silencio!" which echoed around the place for ages... The Keeper of the Baptistry, a robed lady, walked to the edge of the central font and lifted her head before singing the three notes of the C Major chord in succession. The echo took the notes and merged them into a perfect musical chord.

The place was absolutely full of people standing with their hands up, hoping that the photographer would produce something superb... like this... [coughs modestly] It's amazing how old these buildings are - the cathedral was started in 1063. Three years before William of Normandy set off to do battle with King Harold at Hastings! It was completed in 1092.

The Leaning Tower was started in 1173 and completed in 1372. It started to lean almost from the very beginning.

Reluctantly we follow our guide out of the walled piazza. To reach the bus station involves a half a mile walk, which takes us past more souvenir stalls. We bought a Leaning Mug of Pisa to bring home!

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Highlights of The Mediterranean, 18-25 May 2013 Index Page

A series of articles covering our holiday with David and Miss Jeannie (Creeping Bentgrass on tour!) on the Thomson Dream cruise ship. We'll be calling at Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Ajaccio, Corsica > Civitavecchia, Italy > Livorno, Italy > Puccini's house at Torre del Lago, Italy > Pisa, Italy > Villefranche, France > Barcelona, Spain. At some point we'll be treated to a storm with storm force eleven winds and a somewhat rough sea with decks closed and lots of people turning green.

I usually take something like 300 photographs during a week's cruise. David came back with 2000... I have therefore had to be ruthless when it came to selecting photos for these articles unless I was willing to write - and you, dear readers, were willing to read for as long as it took us to live through the cruise!

Each of the photographs below will take you to the related article and photographs.

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Should That Be Leaning Like That?

Wednesday 22 May 2013. Having cruised around Puccini's lake, we pile onto the coach and after a short drive get off again on a huge expanse of concrete and tarmac that the Italians lovingly call Pisa Bus Station.

Fifteen minutes walk takes us to Miracle Square, where we find the Baptistry, the Basilica and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's one of those places in the world where every step you take you find some African trying to sell you some tat, ignoring the fact that you've waved away or ignored at least ten of his or her fellow peddlers whilst he or she has been approaching you...

Why does it not fall over...? Anyway the Tower is not the only bit of history in the square of course. Galileo sat bored to death in the cathedral once watching the swinging of the chandelier and realised that no matter how far it swung, it took the same time to reach from one extreme to the other. He gave a whistle of amazement, liked the sound and invented the cuckoo clock. Able to turn his hand to anything, he later climbed up the Leaning Tower and repeatedly dropped apples onto Sir Isaac Newton...

We introduced Miss Jeannie to the delights of Granitas, more romantically known as slush to us Brits. David settled for a coke which wasn't as inclined to squash and spill, meaning he didn't have to interrupt his photography until he had finished drinking...

Then after an hour or so of sunburn, we started along the row of souvenir stalls which led back towards the coach excursion meeting point. Ah, how unusual! A fridge magnet!!!

Out of the four of us I'm sure you can guess who got fed up of the souvenir shops the quickest? Yes indeed. The clicky-monster and I headed off on a more direct route to the meeting point. Or to be more precise, to a bar and pavement cafe close by the meeting point.

Once the ladies had joined us and we met up with the rest of the group and fended off another set of Africans - "No thanks I don't want a Leaning Tower tea towel, or a native drum..." - we set off walking back to the bus station. There was one chap I didn't recognise and having fallen (as you do if you're anything like me) into conversation with him, it turned out he was from another ship and had taken a bus to Pisa from Livorno and had forgotten where the bus station was so had tagged onto our group as he knew from our language we would be heading for the same place as he was! The bus station was so huge that he was still walking towards the public bus service section as we passed him on our coach.

Back onboard the Thomson Dream we learn that tomorrow's itinerer... Itinni... stuff we are doing has changed. We were due to go to St Raphael near St Tropez in France but there's some rough weather that way and instead we are to call at Villefranche between Nice and Monaco. Miss Franny and I have been there before but are delighted to get a chance to show David and Miss Jeannie as it's a lovely place.

We go to watch the show that night and then stay in the show lounge to watch the crew members' show. One of the bar staff, a tiny girl from the Philippines has a very creditable stab at Puccini's Oh Mio Babbino Caro and there was a very good street dance troupe, who Miss Jeannie collared for a photo, together with one of the waiters from the restaurant, far left, who had chopped up a few boards to kindling for the ship's furnaces.

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