“Rapid fire tourists”
Pisa-Cinque Terre-Torino
As we were so close to Pisa, we were there by 10, and out by 10.20. We’ve decided to simply ignore the expected requirement to park away from major tourist attractions, and just try to drive by as close as we can (after kicking ourselves last night as to how we could have had some amazing video footage of Milo driving around Lucca during sunset). So, we literally parked outside the leaning tower of Pisa, saw every single tourist doing the whole ‘Dad, pretend you’re pushing the tower’ – I’d hate to do a google image or Flickr search of Pisa, it must just be pages & pages of people pushing Pisa?
But, there were other bits around the tower, that we of course ignored. There were cathedrals and Museums. Not something that these tourists want to be bothering with. They’re for round 2 of seeing these places (i.e. above the age of 60, when there’s not such a rush with things).
The next rapid tourist speed past was Cinque Terre (5 towns). It was our 2nd choice Amalfi coast (as we’d had to scrap that due to time, and the hate to feel we are simply tracking back on ourselves), which were these 5 fishing towns, built into the side of the cliffs, on the Mediterranean. They had banned cars, so after skipping one town, we found some car parking in the next one along. They were of course very cool, and very beautiful. We stayed about 30 minutes, before the heat & tourists beat us.
But, today’s main event, was to visit Meg’s new school near Turin/Tourino (can someone explain to me why we have Anglicised Italian place names? Firenze, Roma, Tourino, Venize, all seem like names perfectly easy for us foreigners to pronounce?). After being initially directed by the sat nav to a car park 15kms away from the school (thankfully – you could see the blood drain from Meg’s face when she thought this may have been the town she was going to have to live in for 6 months), we got to the right place. And it seemed Italian to me. Cobbled streets, a small church, 1 pub, 1 local supermarket, a couple of cafes, people cycling around, and all in all pretty goddamn quiet. The school building was not your 80’s secondary school building, but in fact a beautiful castle’esque building, shared with the local library, a maze, some big trees and a fountain. I can confirm this is not South Bucks’ 6th form college in Flackwell Heath.
After the days’ driving & sweating, we found the perfect out of town carbuncle of a hotel for us to crash. And that’s exactly what we did (after a quick re-arrange of the final week of the trip – who needs to see Nice, Monaco, Monte Carlo, Provence, etc. Expensive and over-rated I say…)
Day 36
