Italy, 6 cities, 15 days.

Pisa - nice tower, quite a lean Pisa was the last stop in this trip.  Train from Florence with a change in Empoli.  The train journey was great.  I'm surprised Pisa isn't larger.  It's a compact city with two highlights.  Firstly the Duomo complex with the famous leaning tower and secondly the nearby Vespa scooter factory.  Q was less impressed than me by the latter but there is a Vespa museum there which is pretty good and also free. The Duomo is impressive but not quite in the same league as others we have visited on this holiday.   The famous tower is of course the bell tower for the cathedral.   I was surprised by just how much it leans.  The book said 13ft and 5 degrees but it looks more than that.  So much so that I refuded go up it.  I don't think it would be too difficult to fix.  Take it all down marking all the bits, put in a decent foundation and build it back up again minus the lean.  However, as ...

Sienna and the crazy Palio We arrived here on the 29th on the afternoon train from Florence. Plenty of time to stroll the short distance into town from our hotel and begin to work out both the layout of this essentially medieval town and sort out the way the race works.  After three days in Siena I'm not sure we have too firm a handle on either of those things.  We didn't use the same route back to the hotel twice but did have fun getting lost.  The town is quite stunning.  The Duomo or cathedral is at the top of the hill and streets radiate out and down from there with another network of narrow streets which sort of follow the contours of the hill.  The Campo - a huge steeply sloping square is part way down the hill and it's in this square where the race is run.   We were fortunate to be able to see the four trial races, two per day, which precede the main event.   All were exciting.  The trial races allowed us to get our bearings a...

Florence - last day On this our last day before heading on to Sienna we completed our tour of the city. We abandoned the planned trip to the Duomo.  The queues were huge, too long and too hot.  We covered that church as the main part of our previous day trip to this city.  We visited the other huge church complex, Santa Maria Novello, the one near the railway station.  Again it didn't disappoint.  The quality of art in these buildings is simply stunning.   Some photos below taken by me don't begin to do justice to the subject.  Follow the link to their web site for more info. https://www.visitflorence.com/florence-churches/santa-maria-novella.html We finished off with a late meal in a Trattoria located in a small side street.  Looked a bit like the one in that Disney animation, Lady and the Tramp.  The meal was great, then off to get ready for our next train journey, from Florence to Siena.  Florence has been hard wor...