We leave Elba and head back to the mainland. An hours drive north puts us at a beach which was recommended by our AirBnB hosts in Venice. It’s a pure white sandy beach with turquoise water, all created by the waste from a local bicarbonate of soda factory!! It’s quite strange. It could be mistaken for the Caribbean looking from beach to sea, but all around are the signs of industry – cooling towers & a pipeline into the sea. Its very busy with lots of hawkers selling cheap sunglasses and umbrellas. Its not really for us and we move on after a quick dip.
Head on to Pisa where the Leaning Tower does not disappoint. It’s quite the site & we get the obligatory “holding up the tower” shot. From some angles it looks like its cheekily photo bombing the more stately Duomo & Baptistry. Its quite comical really – probably not what the good burghers of Pisa were aiming for when they commissioned it!
It’s soon time to head to our AirBnB for the next two nights and we are glad of it as the temperature has broken 30 degrees and we are baking! Unfortunately we booked a place without aircon, thinking we could cope for a couple of nights without it. How wrong we were! At 3am the bedroom thermostat still says 26.5degrees and we both manage only about 2 hours sleep. We can’t go through another night of that so hot foot it (literally) into Pisa first thing to find a cafe with WiFi (another thing lacking in the flat – which we knew about but again underestimated how much not having it would impact on our ability to function!) There we book a room in a beautiful looking castle with AC and WiFi in the foothills of Lucca for that night. We have already booked & paid for the night in our Pisa AirBnB but at only €30 a night we chalk it up to experience. It’s not worth another night of slowly cooking rather than sleeping.
At 9.30am we are booked to go up the Leaning Tower, having only seen it from the ground the day before. It’s another weird experience, but this time in a good way. Its incredible how much of a lean there is and that it is still standing. Traversing up the spiral stairs makes me feel quite queasy and unbalanced. Ben likens it to a hall of mirrors where everything is distorted and the description is spot on. The tower is nowhere near as tall as many of the bell towers that we have climbed this trip but the view from the top is good nonetheless.
Back at the sun fired Pisa oven of an AirBnB we pack up and leave a day early, heading to Lucca for lunch and a mooch before going on to our hillside castle.
In Lucca we choose a place for lunch based on its shady location. This turns out to be a mistake. Ben gets rudely told to move his hat off the table by a staff member and we should probably have left at that point. The bruschetta is dry, with tasteless tomatoes & dried herbs Then the fun really starts. Ben had ordered “shrimp stew” – so described on the menu. This turned out to be three large bbq-ed king prawns – a pleasant surprise for him. I had ordered “scallops” which turned out to be not shellfish but pork escalopes!! When we pointed this out to the staff they just said “we know”! The pork escalopes were coated in a slimy breadcrumb which hadn’t been cooked properly. We had also ordered a grilled aubergine & courgette. Both were slimy in oil and not pleasant. The courgette was more like a gherkin which had been grilled. Truly dire food and rude service which was a shame as Lucca itself is a lovely town and well worth a few hours of mooching.
By this point we need another cool off so head to our hillside castle. Some confusion over where we are actually staying on arrival but that’s forgivable seeing as we only booked at 8am this morning and its now 2pm. The room is lovely and blissfully cool and we spend the afternoon lounging by the cold plunge pool & catching up on diary entries. Make up for the naff lunch with a meal in the castle which is delicious – a spinach soufflé in nutmeggy bechamel sauce for appetiser followed by ravioli with a meaty ragu for primi then onto slow cooked beef with (a lot of) peppercorns accompanied by soft salad leaves and a smooth olive oily polenta and finally a slice of baked cheesecake. All this is washed down with a spumante made on site, whilst we sit overlooking typical Tuscan countryside. The evening is topped off perfectly when Ben spots a series of glowbugs dancing up and down the path back to our room. The weirdness of the last few days is all but forgotten.