ITALY, TUSCANY AND THE EMPERORS NEW CLOTHES

At the moment Bridget and I are enduring another enforced rest in a stunning hostel in Sofia. Her knee went caput on our first day's cycling in Bulgaria and so we were forced to take another train into the capital. (More on this later). Sitting here now Italy seems like a long time ago. We crossed Greece in a week and loved it and the more we loved Greece the more we felt dissatisfied we had spent six weeks in Italy. Now before I explain our discontent let me make a few basic points:

• We loved Lucca - a really warm, friendly walled city with a great vibe and loads of towers.
• We were pleasantly surprised by Pisa and the stunning impact it has on your senses.
• We loved San Gimignano - we probably just stayed there too long.
• We thoroughly enjoyed a day in Siena and would have liked more time there
  
• We had a brilliant time couch-surfing with Garbriel just north of Cortona.
• We fully appreciated the kindness shown at the camp site at Bracciano, north of Rome.
• We loved Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast, Capri, Pompei and especially Herculaneum
• We had a brilliant time with Ruth and Mark in Florence.
• We fell in love with Venice and thoroughly enjoyed our time with my Mum and Dad.
  

When you read the above list it may seem surprising that when we left on the ferry from Venice to Greece we could have had any other opinion of Italy than "wow what a great country". But Italy and especially Tuscany is for me like the Emperors New Clothes of tourism - and I am going to be the one to stand up and say the unthinkable. As lovely as Tuscany is I think it is over rated. As beautiful as the Tuscan hill towns are, when you have seen one or two they all begin to blend together. As wonderful as the art in Florence is I think there simply too many "Madonna and Child". I am sure for art historians Florence is a Mecca, for the ignorant like me there is too much to take in. I know that my views of Italy will have been clouded somewhat by the breakdown of my bike (see separate post) but I have tried not to let this affect my judgement too much and writing now a number of weeks later I feel this is a considered review of our time in Italy. Had I written this just before we left Bracciano I think it would have been altogether more colourful. We spent six weeks in Italy, we probably should have been there no more than three or four.

Initially on arriving in Italy we were just happy to be on our bikes again. We really enjoyed the coast though soon came to appreciate that camp sites in Italy had different standards that those in France. Still we camped by the sea a number of
times, were able to take a swim in the evenings and cook great dinners with great views. We loved Lerici (sp?) and before that had a "thrilling" ride, against the rules, through some mad one way tunnels where you had a set amount of time to get through before the traffic started coming in the opposite direction. Fortunately the tunnels were separated by gaps and had traffic lights

so we were able to do one at a time and then wait our turn before proceeding through the next one. As soon as we could though we abandoned them, terrified that our families would never forgive us if one of us was injured or killed. Leaving the tunnels though gave us an extremely long and steep climb up from the sea front and added miles to our journey but one or two were an adrenalin rush enough and a long sweaty climb far more preferable.

It really took little time at all to make it into Tuscany and arrive in Lucca, a town we soon came to love. We spent an enchanting evening cycling around the town on our bicycles, watching the sun set from the walls and eating our first Italian ice cream (coffee and chocolate I think). It was lovely to wander around a bike friendly town, through narrow streets and big open squares with the towns towers above us sprouting trees, a novelty that took us by surprise and which we later learned was to give some shade
for the guards watching for invading forces.

Sun set over Lucca

View from the top

Another tower

From Lucca we were able to take a day ride to Pisa and were pleasantly surprised how much we liked it. We went with some cynicism, thinking over hyped, full of tourists, hot, busy and nothing we hadn't seen in a thousand photographs before. So when we rounded the corner to see for the first time, the tower, the Cathedral and the Baptistry, the view took our breath away.

It was so much more impressive than we had expected and far more beautiful. Seeing the tower's lean for real was stranger than I could ever have imagined in spite of all those photographs and climbing even weirder, one minute feeling like you were leaning to the left, next to the right, now lurching forward, now back as you go round and round and up the stairs.

The Cathedral was also an unexpected pleasure - especially the doors and some of the art inside

but our favourite was the Baptistry. Far simpler, it reminded us of the Pantheon in Rome and the curator's demonstration of its "perfect" accoustics was magical. Pisa was one of those places, for us at least, were the hype was justified, somewhere that didn't disappoint. We came away thinking "wow" and along with Lucca, Pisa is one of the few places in Italy we would like to go back to.

Couldn't resist

After Lucca we moved on to San Gimignano (sp?). Unfortunately we had a tricky and extremely hilly ride to get there. There was 20 km of up, I had three puntures and by the end of the day Bridget's knee was playing up. We found a lovely campsite just outside the town with a stunning view of the towers and walls. We wanted really to spend one day here, take a day ride to Volterra and then move on. Unfortunately because of B's knee we had to spend three days, couldn't get to Volterra (although it was only 30km away, the only bus gave you about 20 minutes to look around before you had to jump on another to make sure you could get back) and as impressive as San G was three days was too much. The good news was that we were able to take a day trip to Siena and then get on our way to Cortona where we were to couch surf with Gabriel just north of the town.