Wanderung 19

Meandering the Mediterranean

Bus Trip from Rome to Venice

April - May 2009

Friday, April 24th, 2009: Pisa, Italy

Bob:

Our bus drove us from Florence to Venice, but in the most roundabout way you can imagine. First we drove to the West coast of Italy to visit the city of Pisa, and then back East past Florence and over the Appenine Mountains to Venice. That involved a lot of driving, but it was nice to finally see Pisa with its famous Leaning Tower. On our drive we also saw the Dolomites in the distance to the North and passed what was described as an old Roman aquaduct.

Upon arrival in Pisa, we walked from the bus stop to a gate in the old city wall. Inside we found the cathedral, the baptistry, a cemetery, and the famous leaning tower. Along the way in we saw an apron for sale in a little shop with "Sara" embroidered on it, and that made us immediately think of our daughter-in-law because she is a very good cook and seems to enjoy cooking for her family, which fortuately includes us when we are visiting! We also found many "Pinnochio" puppets, and we were told that the story of Pinnochio had originated in Pisa rather than in the Walt Disney Studios! Who knew? (Monika did, because she read the Italian version of Pinnochio when she was growing up.)

Anyway, I bought us all tickets to see the baptistry and the cathedral because that was about all we thought we had time for. The baptistry was a severely plain but surprisingly impressive building with, of course, the baptismal font in the center and something that looked like a pulpit off to one side. Someone gave a chant while we were there, and the acoustics seemed to be absolutely perfect, a ghostly echoing fading away into a profound silence.


 

The Cathedral was really beautiful. The style was high Gothic and it was a wonderful example of the type. Inside we found a gorgeous altar, nice paintings mounted on the wall, colorful stained glass windows, and a dead body in a glass coffin. The latter I found more than a bit gruesome, but that's looking at it with modern sensibilities. I'm sure in the Good Old Days the church folk looked upon the body as a Good Thing. They might have looked at the cadaver and thought "Holy Relic" whereas I looked at it and thought "Holy Cow!". The presence of a cadaver in a glass coffin did, however, make the cathedral stand out in my mind from all the other cathedrals that we had been seeing over the last several weeks.


 

Monika:

I did enjoy the side altars with their beautiful ceilings. But I was surprised to see some incongruous modern sculptures located right next to the beautiful gothic main altar. I also commented to Bob how all the churches started to run together in our memories after a while


 

Bob:

I would have liked to see the Leaning Tower Of Pisa up close and personal, and maybe even walk up the steps to the top, but that was a separate admission fee. We were running out of time in any case, so Phyllis and I walked slowly back to the bus stop. We did pause long enough for me to purchase two Pinnochio puppets, clothed in the green, red, and white of Italy, for my granddaughters. Monika and Lois caught up with us at the bus stop and in the 10 minutes we had left we hustled back to the apron shop and had them embroider a new one with "Sarah" on it to take home with us, I was amazed that he could do that freehand with some kind of special sewing machine, I think, in under a minute total elapsed time, but that was key to us returning to the bus stop before it departed.

There were a lot of African street vendors next to the bus stop selling everything from African wood carvings and textiles, which interested me a lot, to fake Rolexes and Mount Blanc pens, which interested me not at all. Some of them used the high pressure, in-your-face type of sales tactics that reminded me of the street vendors of Guatemala, and that was irritating. On the other hand, they were just trying to make a living and it was in most ways an honest one. Also, if nobody purchased their wares I'm sure they would cease that type of commerce and from that point of view the street vendors are a natural outgrowth of capitalism and free markets.

The bus back past Florence and across the Appenine Mountains duplicated, as I recall, the route I had driving on my BMW motorcycle when Monika and I visited Imperia, Italy, back in 1973. I remembered the tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge sequence of one part of that interstate road rather clearly because in 1973 there were no lights or reflectors in the tunnels, and when I drove into them from the brilliant bright sunshine in the valley I was temporarily completely blinded. If there's one time you don't want to be temporarily blinded, it's when you are hurtling into a narrow, curving tunnel at 80 miles per hour on a motorcycle! As our bus passed through the same set of tunnels, however,I was relieved to find that in the intervening 36 years the Powers That Be had installed lights in some tunnels and reflectors in all the others, which would hopefully prevent that particular problem.

Crossing the Appenines was in one way anti-climactic as they are a rather gentle chain of mountains maybe 3,000-4,000 ft (or 1,000 meters) high, with rounded peaks and verdant slopes. In the foothills, the wide valleys were covered with farms and the mountainsides were composed of pastures and forests. In the heart of the mountain chain the valleys were narrow and V-shaped and the slopes were entirely covered in forests. We also noticed how completely unpopulated those central sections were compared to the foothills or the coastal plains; we saw absolutely no sign of human habitation for mile after mile and that, in a country as densely populated as Italy, was surprising.

As we came down out of the Appenines toward Padova (Padua) on the way to Venice, the toll road broadened from the basic 4 lanes to 6 and ultimately 8 lanes. Padova seemed to be mostly industrial from what we could see from the toll road. We stopped short of Venice proper as the Hotel Poppi was located on the mainland side of the lagoon, whereas Venice is located on the far side of the lagoon. Monika, Lois, and I walked to a nearby strip mall to shop for basic essentials for an evening meal; the rest of our group went out again for another evening of fun and frolic. How they could do that night after night and still get up bright and early for the next day's touring was beyond me. Sometimes I feel older than at other times, and seeing the youngsters partying all night and running around all day was one of those times. In any case, we oldsters had a light supper and enjoyed a nice, quiet evening before going to bed.

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Transatlantic Cruise Map of Northern Italian Bus Trip Map of Eastern Mediterranean Cruise Epilog

April 2009
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