Up early again this
morning and soon driving towards Lucca again. This time, we stopped
off on the way at the Ponte della Maddalena – the Bridge of Mary
Magdalene – popularly known as the Devil's Bridge. A very
impressive piece of medieval structural engineering, the bridge was
built in the 11th century, forming a vital crossing over
the Serchio River on the Via Francigena, an important medieval
pilgrimage route from France to Rome.
The vernacular name
stems from a story, one of many told about these 'remarkable'
medieval bridges, in which its builder, distraught about being unable
to finish the bridge on time, made a pact with the Devil, whereby the
latter would finish it in return for the soul of the first to cross
it. The builder was then careful to ensure that a pig was the first
to cross the bridge, thus thwarting the nasty old Devil.
Regardless of how it
was built, the bridge is certainly very impressive, and we shared it
with a group of three late-middle-aged Italian men, all armed with
cameras, all snapping away merrily.
Just outside Lucca
we stopped at the big, new Essalunga supermarket (as you may have
guessed by now, we love a European supermarket). This one loved us
back – so excited are they about their new flagship outpost that
they were giving away free bottles of Chianti to shoppers as they
(we) left.
Our destination for
today was Pisa – when Sarah heard that we were in the vicinity she
insisted that we all went to see the Leaning Tower. The land around
the city is extremely flat and as we hit the outskirts, Kate pointed
out the tower, white and leaning, poking up over the tops of the
nearby buildings. Following Sally's directions, we drove through
those outskirts until we reached the Arno River, where we parked the
car and walked along a series of eerily quiet streets to the tower.
Before long we found
it, looking just as the pictures picture it – white, ornate and on
a tilt. It's situated in a large, grassed precinct ('Don't walk on
the grass') with a few other impressive, if less off-kilter
buildings, surrounded by numerous groups of tourists doing the
'holding up the falling building' thing, which Kate insisted the
girls also have a go at. Formalities out of the way, we meandered
over to the city centre, which was hosting a nice antique/craft
market.
As we still didn't
have anywhere to stay next, we spent some time looking for a
bar/cafe/restaurant with free wi fi where we could have lunch while
wandering the old information superhighway. We didn't have a whole
lot of luck, however; although we did see a sign advertising Pisa's
free city-wide wi fi network. But it was one of the those Catch-22
networks where you had to register to connect – after which they
would helpfully send you an activation message to the email account
you couldn't access because you didn't have wi fi. After a while we
gave up and just back walked along the river to the car.
Yesterday, we left
Florence feeling a bit unimpressed. We had had quite high
expectations – everyone raves about how beautiful Florence is –
but we just found it crawling with tourists, caricaturists and tat
sellers. Yes, there are some amazing buildings, but get away from
them and overall, the city is quite architecturally boring. Pisa was
the opposite – we went in with low expectations and were quietly
impressed by the architecture, and once you got away from the Leaning
Tower, there weren't all that many tourists.
On the way home, we
stopped outside the cafe in Bagni di Lucca that we had visited a few
days before and used the password we'd gained to access their wi fi –
and finally decided on tomorrow's destination - Turin.
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