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Showing posts with label Pisa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pisa. Show all posts

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Visiting Pisa (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Pisa (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Plan A the next day involved a train ride to Pisa.  All of the city’s most famous monuments are conveniently located together for tourists.

Laurent had to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa to get a panoramic view of the town.  (It was still open to tourists at that time.)  I did not want to huff and puff up the narrow, Medieval stairways in the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I spent my time watching tourists taking pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa behind them.  I do not think they knew they could go up in the Tower, because they could not read Italian.

When Laurent reappeared, we visited the Duomo (Cathedral).  I was happy to see the little Hercules on the Baptistery Font that heralded the Renaissance due to its use of ancient Greek ideals of beauty to sculpt it.  This little Hercules was sculpted by Nicola Pisano ushered in the Renaissance in the 13th century.

Small pieces of fresco paintings lay in orderly piles on the floor.  Bombs from World War II had shattered the frescoes that were lying on the floor.

The love and devotion that went into tedious work like that amazes me, but preserving the patrimony must have been a real motivator for the restorers I thought and maybe good pay or job perks.

The cemetery was full of Roman sarcophogae that were reused during the Renaissance.  Many professors from the University of Pisa had graves there.  I wondered if the tradition in Italy was the same as that in France where graves were recycled every 30 years unless the family keeps up a grave payment.

Even though Pisa lies to the west of Florence, we still had to enter Florence on the east side using the train.  There were gardens everywhere, but the east side of town was poorer than the west side.

There was a large area of small houses made of corrugated siding that did not make it into the tourist guides to visit.  Poor people in Italy seemed much poorer than those in the United States; they had gardens and ramshackle homes, but were borderline homeless.

I was beginning to become somewhat acclimated to the heat and had good things to say about the food, particularly my lunch that day.  My appetite was returning.

I tried a menu item called ribollita.  This item is a Tuscan soup made with bread, beans, vegetables, and whatever vegetable leftovers may be in the house.

It is served hot and comes topped off with a generous helping of olive oil.  I loved it, but almost melted in the heat like a chocolate bar when I ate it for lunch.

Another food item that Laurent and I liked was the bread with the dried fruit in it and the lush Tuscan peaches.  I even developed a liking for fizzy water.


By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books




Ruth Paget Selfie