^UP^
Wednesday 29th May
The alarm was set for 04:30. Airline schedules are not made for the
convenience of passengers. On previous Jet2 flights (I believe the
correct form is jet2.com -- that ".com" is so 1990s -- and I assume
somebody beat them to the jet.com domain, and they couldn't think of
anything else. Oh, "jet to"? I see.) Anyway, on previous flights, in
spite of being "checked in" and having a boarding pass, I'd had to join
a long queue to deposit my luggage. I was anticipating the same
nonsense this time, but either they've worked it out or I was just
lucky, because there was no wait worth speaking of.
Security was a breeze too. And the flight passed uneventfully,
although, as usual, I had the opportunity to observe how gormless are
the travelling public. Get a clue, guys.
In Pisa, I collected the rental car. I'd booked it via Jet2's website,
which had actually been hirecars.com, which is really Carhire3000.
Companies with a good reputation don't hide their identity. They're
brokers anyway, not an actual hire company, but you get a better deal
than booking direct, the downside being that you don't know which
company the car will be from until you book it.
In this case, it was Goldcar, a Spanish company newly expanding into
elsewhere in Europe. I'd heard that their organizational performance
was poor when they opened up in Pisa, but I had no problems. Other than
the fact that they gave me a Fiat Panda, and claimed to have to other
cars in that class to switch for me.
I had several hours to fill before they
wanted me in Chianni, and what
I'd decided to do was park in Pisa and explore the city again. I had
researched a big, free car park and stored it in my TomTom navigator.
(Which is ancient, has no battery and is showing signs of mental
decay.) I got directly to the car park and strolled the 10-minute walk
to the "Field of Miracles" with the leaning whatsit and so on.
It was sunny, with some broken cloud, but there was a very cold wind. I
took some photographs, using my trademark policy of having the tower
upright and the cathedral leaning, and walked on to see more of the
town. On my last visit, the piazza at the Palazzo di Cavaliere had been
closed off for a major re-paving. The works aren't fully finished yet,
but it's looking much better.
I had a pizza and a beer for lunch, and
walked back towards the tower
to return to the car park. Unfortunately, after that, I mistook an
underpass under the railway and walked a long way in the wrong
direction before I realised. I had to retrace my steps and take the
proper turning.
Back in the Panda, I set the TomTom to take me to the
Co-op in
Ponsacco, on the way to Chianni. But I got confused by its instructions
and the traffic and took a wrong turning for the second time that day.
It meant I had to do a long detour, but I got back on the right road in
the end. I stocked up on a few basic groceries (like wine) in the Co-op
and carried on to Chianni, where the family welcomed me. Roberta, the
daughter, probably in her 40s, manages the rentals. She does not speak
English, but is fluent in French. My Italian being limited, French
proved a useful supplement.
I was given a small bottle of local olive oil, an unlabelled bottle of
Chianti, and a little bottle of vin santo, made, if I understood
correctly, by Franco, Roberta's father. They left me to unpack, after I
declined offer to take me to the pizzeria for dinner. I was tired after
the early start, although not so tired I couldn't cook my own dinner.
Thursday 30th May
I could have done with more sleep, but a
huge
thunderstorm raged for
several hours during the night. I got up quite late and pottered around
for a while. Before lunch, I took a short walk to see some of the
village. The weather was cool, with a mix of sunshine and cloud.
After lunch, the door buzzer went (loud and raucous). Apparently,
Franco hadn't seen me up and about all day and they wanted to see if I
was all right. While talking French-Italian to Roberta, I mentioned
that I wanted a SIM for my internet dongle, and she directed me to
Mercatone Uno, a big home and appliance store in Capannoli, about a
20-minute drive away.
A little later, off I went and found the place, pretty much by chance,
but they had no data SIMs, just a SIM+dongle package for €100.
They did
suggest I try the mobile phone shop in the town centre, which I found,
pretty much by chance, and bought a SIM with 2Gb credit for €22.
I came home and spent a couple of hours trying to get it to work, using
various arcane practices. Eventually, I put it in my Android phone
instead of the dongle, and was able to get on the internet on the
phone. But the phone's wifi hotspot technology wasn't letting the
computer share the connection, which was a big restriction.
Friday 31st May
It occurred to me that I hadn't done the simplest thing with the dongle
and SIM, just plugging it in to the computer and manually dialling *99#
(the magic internet code). That worked straight away, giving me
internet access on the laptop, which I used to plan a route to Volterra
for the afternoon.
In the morning, I was taking a stroll and met Franco, who took me into
Anna's Bar and bought me a coffee. Anna speaks German and English, and
Franco got her to translate his apology for the weather, although I
don't think it was really his fault.
The route to Volterra includes sections tightly hairpinning up the
sides of steep slopes. There were two emergency single-track sections
of road. One was a landslide which had engulfed the side of the road,
while the other was where the downhill side had collapsed into the
valley. Both looked recent, so I assumed they were from the
thunderstorm on Wednesday night.
The weather was still
intermittently cloudy and quite cool. I got to
Volterra, but hadn't thought to research parking beforehand. I had to
drive around a bit and found a rather unofficial spot. Volterra was
more tourist-oriented than I expected, but not in a bad way. Lots of
restaurants and souvenir shops selling alabaster, Volterra's "thing".
Volterra was one of the 12
city states of the Etruscan confederation
prior to conquest by Rome, but few archaeological remains from that
period are visible. The presumed Etruscan acropolis has some random
foundations above ground, and one of the town gates is mostly of
Etruscan date, the vertical sides anyway, which are made of huge,
carefully-cut blocks. The arch above must have been rebuilt at a later
date with smaller stones, perhaps Roman times. Also dating to Roman
Volterra is a good theatre, with the shape of the tiered seats still
clear, and the various porticoes and columns giving an idea of what it
must have been like.
I returned home late in the
afternoon, having obtained a tourist map
showing town car parks, useful for the next visit. I had decided
to have dinner in Chianni's most upmarket restaurant, Le Vecchie
Cantine ("The Ancient Vaults") and arrived at a carefully-calculated
time: not so early as to seem unsophisticated, but not too late in case
it got busy. As it was, the place was about half-full, the bulk of
patrons Germans, including one large group. My dinner was excellent, if
not cheap. When they bring you a "free" glass of prosecco with the
menus, you can be sure they'll sting you with the price.
Saturday 1st June
I realised that I needed more food, given that I couldn't afford to eat
in Le Veccie Cantine every day. When I'd been to Capannoli I'd checked
out the Conad supermarket next to the electricals warehouse, and
decided it would do fine. Closer than the Ponsacco Co-op.
In fact, I didn't really have anything suitable for
lunch in the house,
so I had an apple and a Mars bar and drove to Capannoli, where I bought
a good range of stuff. It's the odds and ends that make the difference:
garlic, butter and mayo.
In the afternoon, I walked South out of the village, and found the
restaurant I hand't yet seen, and the town park, "Il Boschetto", not
yet open for the Summer.
Sunday 2nd June
It was sunny enough in the morning to sit out on the balcony, and later
to take a walk in shirtsleeves. When I was on the balcony, Franco
called up to me waving a plastic bag, which turned out to contain a
fresh bottle of Chianti, straight from the barrel, and a larger bottle
of the vin santo (as it happened, I'd finished the little one the night
before).
In the afternoon, I departed
town in a random direction (just trying
the lay of the land) and had a very scenic drive on steep twisting
roads through woods and flower meadows, almost the Tuscan stereotype. I
saw only one or two other cars. Carrying on in that direction would
eventually have got me to the coast -- Franco says there's a great
beach after Castellina Marittima -- but I had decided to turn around
and
go to Volterra again.
On one nice, straight piece of road, an oncoming truck driver flashed
his lights at me, and I slowed down, as you do. Sure enough, when the
corner did come up, the Carabinieri -- two squad cars -- had a
checkpoint, although they had already stopped and were dealing with a
very small, very shiny, very red car. Ater I passed, I flashed the
headlights at any car coming in the opposite direction. As you do.
When I'd been in Volterra
before, I'd noticed that they were having a
festival -- the "Palio del Cero" -- in the medieval style, something
very common in central Italy. In this case, it was basically a
tug-of-war contest, with the additional feature of a little wooden
castle being between the two teams, and a large fake candle (il cero)
on top of it.
It was fine and sunny all afternoon, and I took a couple of breaks from
watching the action by going out to a panoramic viewpoint and sitting
in the sun for a while, but I was getting rather tired by seven
o'clock, just before the bottom decider and top final pair (odds on
finalists Villamagna, since they'd won 9 out of the 13 years since it
started) and was thinking about leaving. A bird (perhaps a pigeon)
decided to help me make my mind up by shitting substantially on my leg
from a great height. I cleaned it off with a hankie, which I had to
discard in a bin, but it left a stain. I watched the two bottom teams
fight it out -- Santo Stefano came last -- and hit the road for home.
I changed my trousers and was out filling the car's windscreen washer
when Franco came up and pointed out that you can actually see Volterra
from Chianni -- it's about 30km away -- and then showed me "my" garden,
which he has been setting up for Summer: grass cut, chairs and a
parasol. With luck the weather will be suitable to use it.
Monday 3rd June
I was trying to space out my travels and not tire myself charging off
in all directions, and I resolved to stay at home. When I checked the
local weather forecast, it promised thunderstorms in the afternoon. I
suppose I could have got in the car and gone off to see a museum or
something else indoors, but I just lazed around. I watched an old
episode of 'Don Matteo'.
Tuesday 4th June
After a day's rest, I felt
happy to go off on another tour, but when I
checked the forecast for some of the big names, such as Lucca, they
showed a possibility of thunderstorms. The lowest risk seemed to be on
the coast, which decided me. I was getting into the car when Franco
came out, and when I showed him my map, he suggested the seaside town
of Vada. Good choice.
The drive is direct on the map, more or less: take away all the twisty
hairpins, but in three dimensions it goes way up a mountain range and
back down again towards the sea. It's very scenic. The engineer who
designed the "range" display in the Fiat must be thesame guy who did
the Windows file copy progress bar. It told me I had enough fuel for
anything from 265km to 455km, I think depending on whether I was going
up or down a hill. Plenty to get to Vada and back anyway.
I had the bad luck that the route had also been picked
by some large
cycle outing. I'm sure there were a hundred or more on bikes,
struggling up the steep and twisty roads in bunches riding abreast. I
don't know why cyclists do that. Maybe if they strung out singly some
motorists would try to pass when it was't safe. Maybe they're just
being annoying. I approve of cycling, but in this circumstance they
were a definite road hazard, and I had to concentrate hard the whole
time.
In Vada I found an on-street parking spot near the town centre, but my
luck was not as lucky as I thought, because I saw later that there is
loads of parking, all around town, and all of it very sparsely used. I
can only assume that it's needed in the high season (which would be
August in Italy), in which case the town must be totally bonkers then.
However, it was quiet on my visit. There is a nice church with a
grandiose portico facing on to Garibaldi square, and there's a statue
of the man, to which someone has added a red scarf. I'm not sure if he
was a socialist, although he definitely was a republican, even though
he fought for a monarchy. (The unification of Italy came about by the
relatively constitutional kingdom of Piedmont swallowing up all the
rest.)
A few hundred metres behind the church I found the beach. However, just
at that spot, a bulldozer and big yellow excavator were being used to
re-landscape the sand in some way (ready for Summer, presumably). But
there was plenty more beach to go round, much of it "free", in the
sense that it's not allocated to any sunbed and umbrella concession. If
you go to any of the major resorts in Italy, say Viareggio, almost all
the beach is covered by row upon row of matching beach furniture. I
don't like it.
So in Vada, there was ample space to bring your own umbrella. That's
not my thing though. I like looking at the sea, but I don't go in for
suntanning or swimming. I contented myself with alternately sitting in
the shade and walking along the water's edge, even making the
concession of taking my shoes and socks off, and rolling up my trouser
legs. A little.
I walked quite a long way up
the beach. Pinewoods with picnic tables. A
few sunbed concessions, but mostly free beach. It was after one o'clock
and I was thinking about lunch, although when I turned on the GPS on my
phone to see where I was (I don't leave it on all the time because it
quickly drains the battery) I realised that I had about a three
kilometre walk back to town. I was hungry when I got back to Piazza
Garibaldi, and spotted a pizzeria. It seemed ideal: I realised that I
was harbouring a craving for pizza. Imagine my disappointment to be
told that pizzas were only served in the evening. For lunch, I could
only have primi or secondi dishes. I had a tasty tagliatelli, but was
sorry I could not have had the pizza.
I returned to the beach and took some photos, including some of a
parachute-kite-surf-artist (I don't know what you call them). I got the
iconic "flying through the air" shot.
It was getting into late
afternoon, but I wasn't ready to go home.
After a quick trip to the Co-op (I'd run out of breakfast croissants) I
set course for Castiglioncello, up the coast. There's a very large
marina with some of the architypical floating gin palaces, but oddly,
the town itsef doesn't seem very upmarket. Rather scruffy, if anything.
Unlike Vada, where the sand is nearly white, Castiglioncello's beaches
are dark grey, stony and not so appealing. The nice thing about it
though was that it seemed to be a family type of place, where everyday
people go to the seaside.
As I was inspecting the massed rows of luxury water transport, I
noticed a shabby little cruiser, "Pretty", with the registration on the
back as "Fort Lauderdale, FL". If someone really sailed THAT across the
Atlantic and all the way up the Med, I'm really impressed. Actually, if
I was rich enough to buy a huge yacht, I did find the ideal one. Needed
some work, but it was a beautiful, old-style, wooden vessel. Quality
trumps bling.
I didn't want to take the same route back home in case I had to get
past all the cyclists again on their way back. I managed to plot out an
alternate on the paper map, although towards the end when it seemed to
get complicated, I chickened out and turned on the TomTom. I didn't see
a single cyclist.
Next Week
^UP^
I had several hours to fill before they
wanted me in Chianni, and what
I'd decided to do was park in Pisa and explore the city again. I had
researched a big, free car park and stored it in my TomTom navigator.
(Which is ancient, has no battery and is showing signs of mental
decay.) I got directly to the car park and strolled the 10-minute walk
to the "Field of Miracles" with the leaning whatsit and so on.
I had a pizza and a beer for lunch, and
walked back towards the tower
to return to the car park. Unfortunately, after that, I mistook an
underpass under the railway and walked a long way in the wrong
direction before I realised. I had to retrace my steps and take the
proper turning.
Back in the Panda, I set the TomTom to take me to the
Co-op in
Ponsacco, on the way to Chianni. But I got confused by its instructions
and the traffic and took a wrong turning for the second time that day.
It meant I had to do a long detour, but I got back on the right road in
the end. I stocked up on a few basic groceries (like wine) in the Co-op
and carried on to Chianni, where the family welcomed me. Roberta, the
daughter, probably in her 40s, manages the rentals. She does not speak
English, but is fluent in French. My Italian being limited, French
proved a useful supplement.
I could have done with more sleep, but a
huge
thunderstorm raged for
several hours during the night. I got up quite late and pottered around
for a while. Before lunch, I took a short walk to see some of the
village. The weather was cool, with a mix of sunshine and cloud.
The weather was still
intermittently cloudy and quite cool. I got to
Volterra, but hadn't thought to research parking beforehand. I had to
drive around a bit and found a rather unofficial spot. Volterra was
more tourist-oriented than I expected, but not in a bad way. Lots of
restaurants and souvenir shops selling alabaster, Volterra's "thing".
Volterra was one of the 12
city states of the Etruscan confederation
prior to conquest by Rome, but few archaeological remains from that
period are visible. The presumed Etruscan acropolis has some random
foundations above ground, and one of the town gates is mostly of
Etruscan date, the vertical sides anyway, which are made of huge,
carefully-cut blocks. The arch above must have been rebuilt at a later
date with smaller stones, perhaps Roman times. Also dating to Roman
Volterra is a good theatre, with the shape of the tiered seats still
clear, and the various porticoes and columns giving an idea of what it
must have been like.
I returned home late in the
afternoon, having obtained a tourist map
showing town car parks, useful for the next visit. I had decided
to have dinner in Chianni's most upmarket restaurant, Le Vecchie
Cantine ("The Ancient Vaults") and arrived at a carefully-calculated
time: not so early as to seem unsophisticated, but not too late in case
it got busy. As it was, the place was about half-full, the bulk of
patrons Germans, including one large group. My dinner was excellent, if
not cheap. When they bring you a "free" glass of prosecco with the
menus, you can be sure they'll sting you with the price.
In fact, I didn't really have anything suitable for
lunch in the house,
so I had an apple and a Mars bar and drove to Capannoli, where I bought
a good range of stuff. It's the odds and ends that make the difference:
garlic, butter and mayo.
In the afternoon, I departed
town in a random direction (just trying
the lay of the land) and had a very scenic drive on steep twisting
roads through woods and flower meadows, almost the Tuscan stereotype. I
saw only one or two other cars. Carrying on in that direction would
eventually have got me to the coast -- Franco says there's a great
beach after Castellina Marittima -- but I had decided to turn around
and
go to Volterra again.
When I'd been in Volterra
before, I'd noticed that they were having a
festival -- the "Palio del Cero" -- in the medieval style, something
very common in central Italy. In this case, it was basically a
tug-of-war contest, with the additional feature of a little wooden
castle being between the two teams, and a large fake candle (il cero)
on top of it.
After a day's rest, I felt
happy to go off on another tour, but when I
checked the forecast for some of the big names, such as Lucca, they
showed a possibility of thunderstorms. The lowest risk seemed to be on
the coast, which decided me. I was getting into the car when Franco
came out, and when I showed him my map, he suggested the seaside town
of Vada. Good choice.
It was getting into late
afternoon, but I wasn't ready to go home.
After a quick trip to the Co-op (I'd run out of breakfast croissants) I
set course for Castiglioncello, up the coast. There's a very large
marina with some of the architypical floating gin palaces, but oddly,
the town itsef doesn't seem very upmarket. Rather scruffy, if anything.
Unlike Vada, where the sand is nearly white, Castiglioncello's beaches
are dark grey, stony and not so appealing. The nice thing about it
though was that it seemed to be a family type of place, where everyday
people go to the seaside.
