Inter-Rail 2006

Friday 4th August 2006 - Torino to Pisa

We checked out of our hotel and caught a train from Torino to Pisa via Genova. Both Martin and Marina had been to Pisa before, but of course neither Jack nor Bekky had, so we thought they might like to see the famous leaning tower. The train was quite busy and we hadn't thought to make reservations, so whilst Marina and Jack got seats, Martin and Bekky got their first taste of the "traditional" inter-rail phenomena of sitting in the corridor with your bags! All part of the adventure of course :-) To pass the time, Martin and Bekky played an increasingly silly and hillarious game of hangman. You had to be there....

On arrival in Pisa we left our luggage in the... left luggage office and proceeded on foot in the direction of the leaning tower. Jack's pizza sensor was of course working overtime now that we were in Italy and so we stopped at a restaurant en route and had our first (of many!) pizzas for lunch in Italy.

After lunch we walked the remaining 10 minutes to the site of the leaning tower, Campo dei Miracoli. This grassy area is home to the leaning tower itself as well as a couple of other beautiful old buildings, the Duomo (a cathedral) and the Baptistry. We wandered around, relaxed in the sun on the grass and took photos. We did look into walking up the tower to the top but found that a queuing system was in operation and the wait time was an estimated 3 hours, so we gave that a miss.

When we'd all seen enough of the tower, we headed by bus to the coast, about 30 minutes from the city of Pisa and pitched our tents at what Martin thought was the most horrible, commercial camp site he had ever seen! It was very crowded, with cars and tents interspersed, so that it felt like we were camping in a car park. There was a loud speaker system with speakers on poles all around the site, and the office used it for frequent and very loud announcements, including quite late on in the evening when we were trying to get to sleep. It felt like we were at a concentration camp and Martin vowed that we would leave the next day!

The camp site was adjacent to a small, very crowded private beach though, and whilst this was also quite hideous, it was a beach and it did have the sea of course. So Bekky and Jack were delighted to be able to get into their swimming stuff and play! Martin joined them for a game of "speed piggy in the middle", which is basically the standard game with the addition of the rule that you cannot keep hold of the ball for more than half a second!

Largely out of laziness, we dined at the campsite's restaurant in the evening. The restaurant turned out to be surprisingly good though, with Martin enjoying his gnochi and swordfish very much.