And Tuscany too, but that doesn’t alliterate. After seeing Malf and Dan off, with promises to potentially catch up in Turkey, or if not then back in Oz one day, who would have thought that I’d actually managed to sneak in a few hours with them in Florence the very next day? A marvellous cycling leg took me from La Speiza on the border of the Cinque Terre, down to Viareggio, through Pisa and then to the outskirts of Florence all in one day!
Quite clearly there was not a great deal to see along the way, and so I moved at lightening pace, and especially enjoyed the cycle from Pisa to Florence. For some reason, I always enjoy the cycling when I’m ahead of schedule. There’s nothing like shooting ahead, knowing that you’ve already done more than you’d planned, and can kick on which will give you more time in the next town, or a chance to stop off and do something random you didn’t plan, but looks cool when you stumble across it. This could be anything from a castle that you stumble across on the side of the road, or even just having a good beer with a stranger you meet along the way.
La Speiza was a shithole. There’s really no other word for it. If it wasn’t on the border of the Cinque Terre national park, you wouldn’t bother going there. Unless of course you like to see urban wasteland, light industrial sprawl, enormous road and rail flyovers that send you detouring all over a complex road network, and a shoreline covered with shipping terminals and warehouses. But once I was out of La Speiza, things picked up quickly. Despite a slight headwind, I enjoyed cruising along the beaches that appeared pretty much all the way to Viareggio. I was keen to check out Viareggio, it being the location of the World Lifesaving Championships about 6 years ago.
There were beach chairs and umbrellas stretching for as far as the eye could see, and then quadruple that distance. It was something of a spectacle really, and I’d never expected a beach resort like that to stretch so far along a coastline. Of course there was no way that even one in a hundred chairs were actually being hired out and used. But still they were there for the taking, and from what I could tell, no real place that was designated public space. But maybe I just didn’t ‘get it’. There were a lot of campsites and things, and even if they were all bursting to the seams with tourists, I still found it hard to fathom the number of tourists that would be required to bring the huge stretch of possibly 20km of deck chairs to capacity.
Nothing changed as I pulled in to Viareggio. I was expecting a somewhat larger town to appear, but apart from a couple of elegant hotels on the coast, and possible a few more backstreets to the town, there was really not much that was different. A beachside market stretched for a couple of kilometres, and all along the coastline, there were endless bars, pizzerias and shops selling thongs and handbags and things like that. Behind the line of shops, was a small alley that served basically two functions. The first was to provide an entrance to the various beach bars and cafes – pick where you would like to hire your deck chair and umbrella for the day, grab a drink and then chill out on the sand. The second was basically a huge bicycle parking lot.
There was literally no way to get onto the beach without walking through one of these things, so I just picked one, rolled my bike in and then acted like I owned the place, was entitled to swim there and knew no different. I was going for a saltwater swim, nobody was going to stop me. And nobody did. The ticket office was closed, with a sign saying ‘chair hire at bar’, but I never went to the bar. I walked past hundreds of umbrellas and deck chairs, each numbered and for hire. I dumped my stuff on the beach near a few other people, and jumped in for a swim. The wind was blowing a small swell up, so I could nearly body surf a wave to shore. Nearly. The Mediterranean is incredibly flat!
I got out, jumped under a shower and towelled of, then went into the bar area, used the showers again, filled up my water bottles at a fountain, checked over my bike and then just as I thought I’d completely escaped attention and was about to leave, a group of young Italian kids, about 9-10 years old, took interest in my bicycle. They had never seen anything like it before with all the bags attached, and started playing with the water bottles etc. I had to yell at them, “look but don’t touch boys…” and they may or may not have understood English, but they got the message. Anyway, the next thing you know, I’ve attracted the attention of every patron in the bar area, several families all with kids, and a few sun-leathered regulars. And I though, shit here we go, if it’s anything like Switzerland I’m gonna now find the manager coming out to carry on with the type of passionate flair that only an Italian can manage to pull off. But it didn’t happen. People really didn’t care, even though they noticed me. The difference in the attitudes between Switzerland and Italy was profound. The Swiss were like vigilantes and I’m sure would have held me under citizens arrest. The Italians were too lazy and laid back to care what I was doing, so long as I was really just minding my own business. So I rolled out on my bike waving everyone goodbye and even got a good wave off by the kiddies. Phew!
With the wind now helping me along, and refreshed from the swimming break, I got to Pisa within an hour and a half. Sure as shit, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was covered in scaffolding. They were nearly finished a restoration and cleaning of the whole tower, due to be completed in 2010. From what I could tell they had nearly finished the second last tier and had one more to go – the top one. So anyway, despite the ring of scaffolding high up, I still thought it was pretty impressive. I had no real grand expectations of Pisa because everyone I spoke to about it thought it was overrated. Expecting nothing means you can actually sometimes be impressed, and I was. I didn’t expect it to be in a larger park with another enormous and pretty cathedral, and some other dome shaped building or tower. IT was all made of Carrara white marble, the quarry which I actually saw in the distance when I cycled into Viareggio. Apparently, sculptors such as Michaelangelo used to go out there and hand-pick their own blocks of marble for the statues they carved. They still source marble from there, and for centuries it’s been used to construct many of the buildings in Tuscany and Italy and is one of the fines quality marbles in the world. The leaning tower of Pisa was made from some of this marble, but during the centuries, as it started to lean, obviously things needed to be repaired and it’s not all marble anymore. Still it looks very cool.
The downside to Pisa is that it’s basically been allowed to turn into tourist tat central, and the place is jam packed with hawkers selling all the souvenir crap that you don’t need. It’s a shame that it’s been allowed to happen really, because it would be much more peaceful if that was restricted or limited in some way. Anyhow, taking photos of me pushing up the tower didn’t take long, and I didn’t climb the tower (they used to not let you but obviously this has changed now that it’s been stabilised) so I was soon off. I was NOT going to stay in Pisa, I’d decided that as soon as I saw that it had become tourist central.
And so I cycled on, finding that the road to Florence was amazingly flat and I enjoyed the tailwind. I was quite surprised that I wasn’t initially thrown back out into the countryside like I expected. It was actually very urban and the road for about 20km was all shops, pizzerias, service stations, bars and other specialty stores. I stopped at one of the hundreds of pizzerias and grabbed a takeaway pizza for 4.50€. Bargain, considering I’d been paying 9-10€ for mains in the Cinque Terre. And it was a great pizza, with parma ham and marvellous tomato paste and mozzarella cheese. One thing I can’t figure out though – and it’s happened twice now – is why the Italians don’t cut takeaway pizzas into slices. An annoying little quirk that I’ve picked up on and been caught without cutlery because I didn’t know to check this. But I’m keeping an eye out from now on. I swear, with the amount of pesto, pizza and other cheesy delights I’ve been sampling, my fingers seem to be constantly greasy lately. IT wasn’t helped when a jar of green pesto decided to leak in one of my bags. The bag is waterproof so the oil just pooled itself on the botton along with my wallet, electrical adapters, phone and other gadgets. I still haven’t cleaned all the bloody pesto oil off, it just keeps on re-appearing!
I wild camped 20km out of Florence in a vineyard on top of a hill overlooking a town that the name I never did find out. But they had some kind of Italian hip hop concert happening in the town square and the sound from the concert could be heard right up the valley. So as I drifted off to sleep amongst the grapevines, hidden from view from the road, I was listening to the concert, which was good but to be honest it all sounded the same. Hip Hop rapping stuff never has been my favourite music, and when you can’t actually understand what they are talking about, well there’s not a lot you can really get out of it besides a repetitive baseline.
I woke up to glorious sunshine and skedaddled from the field and the vineyard quite early, just in case the farmer decided to check on his grapes. So by 8am I was literally rolling into Florence, stopping at a supermarket to grab some salami, cheese and drinks. Cheap, and awesomely delicious! By 11am, Malf and Dan and I were roaming the streets, checking out a few sights before they caught a bus to Ljubljana. They were pretty amazed that I had managed to cycle 160km in less than 24 hours and meet up with them again. I honestly hadn’t expected to, but it just happened that way. The buildings in Florence are fabulous, especially the Duomo and the various cathedrals and churches. The bridge Ponte Vecchio is the only remaining bridge in Florence that wasn’t destroyed during the war, and it’s lined with shops on either side, all jewellers. The story goes that a few centuries ago, one of the lords or the king or somebody decided that the bridge was the main route to an important residence or palace or something. And he didn’t like the fact that the town’s butchers used to trade from the bridge. So he ordered all the butcher shops be replaced by goldsmiths. Whatever, there were too many people crossing the bridge to make it a pleasant experience hanging around there. So when Dan and Malf left, I headed straight to find the nearest campsite.
The camp was located on top of a hill, in the name of Michelangelo. It was a good couple of hundred metres high I think, and at the top there was a huge car park with a massive bronze replica of the Statue of David, and the best panoramic view of Florence that you could ever hope for. The campsite was literally 100m down the road on the hill. It was one of the best campsites I’ve been to yet, and I’ve loved all of them, especially the Italian ones. They are such cool places, and I’ve met really nice people at each one. Camping Michelangelo didn’t disappoint, but before I settled in for the night, I made a second visit to the town to the Museum Academia, to check out the famous David by Michelangelo. I kind of balked at the 10€ admission fee (it’s nearly doubled in 3 years according to what I thought was the entry fee from my Lonely Planet guide…) but I figured, you don’t come all the way to Florence and not see the statue of David. And I’m so glad I did, it was magnificent. Standing over 5.1 metres tall, in a museum space that was specifically constructed to house it, you are left in no doubt as to why it is probably the greatest ever sculpture made by man. There’s a famous quote by someone long dead, that basically states that once you have seen David, you no longer need to see any other statues, because you have seen the best. I think that person was spot on. It’s all one solid marble block, a piece of Carrara marble that Michelangelo basically just found abandoned in the courtyard of the cathedral of Florence. It was leftover from the construction work and he acquired permission to use it to make a statue. Of course, the statues is of David, of David and Goliath fame and he is all naked except for the sling hung casually over his shoulder. The sculpting detail is incredible, right down to the veins in his arms, the detail of the enlarged hands and feet and head, and the muscles of his body. I stood there for a long time appreciating it, before snapping a photo (which you aren’t allowed to do but I did anyway) and then thought that I’d seen enough of Florence that day and would move on to Siena in the morning.
I pitched (strung) my hammock between two trees in what was kind of an olive grove on a hill, among loads of other tents. Next to mine was a bunch of Aussies with Greek heritage, from Brisvegas. They were pretty good to chat with. Then I headed up to the bar, found the market open and grabbed a 2.50€ bottle of red and a few beers, and no sooner had I walked onto the deck outside the bar, when four Kiwis noticed that I was wearing my Australian flag singlet top. Now, I don’t normally wear it, because the moment I put it on, every tout, hawker and scammer that’s on his game knows immediately where I’m from, and that I speak English. And of course, all of them have a brother that lives in Sydney or Melbourne or Perth, and they think it’s a wonderful place and by the way, would you like to buy a suit or a piece of carpet rug? No, f*ck off mate. But, my regular wifebeater singlet was standing up on its own and needed a wash, so I had to give the Aussie singlet a run. But if I hadn’t had been wearing it, I might not have grabbed the immediate attention of the Kiwi lads and their girls. I made the first self-depreciating joke to save them the hassle (outnumbered 4-1 with the Kiwis, I had to show them that I could take a joke and they would lay off for the rest of the night) and then the most extraordinary thing happened. Just when you least expect it, I found out that both the boys were surf rowers from a club in New Zealand, and before you know it we were talking about what’s going on in the world of surfboats, some of the big events like the Gallipoli 100 marathon, the Piha Big Wave Classic, and had a good debate about the technical differences between surf rowing and stillwater rowing (skiff rowing they called it). Naturally I won that debate hands down given my London experience. As the night rolled on, the stories we told grew more elaborate and with each beer the waves were higher and higher. The Kiwis are all heading to Rome and I plan to catch up with them there one night, and I think that there will definitely be a bed in NZ should I ever take up their offer to bring a crew over to the north island one day! Awesome.
We really did get stuck into it. At 4:30am I was winding up playing a drunken game of 500 with some foreign cards which I struggled to comprehend. They had V’s and R’s instead of K’s and Q’s for the Kings and Queens. But we managed in our drunken state to have a grand time. At 9:30am I fell out of my hammock and realised that I was supposed to be cycling to Siena. Bugger.
I cleared out, waited in a line for about 40 minutes in the sweltering sun to checkout, and by 1pm was on the road for what I thought would be about 3 hours on the saddle. Boy was I wrong. Without a decent brekkie, and a huge night, I’d left it too late to buy food. Like Spain, bloody Italy does this whole siesta shemozzle, and between 1-4pm, pretty much all the shops shut. Plus it was a Sunday, and many of them weren’t even open to begin with. So I had nowhere along the 75km route to buy any food. Not even an ice cream from a service station. All I had was a bit of pesto and some bread left over from the day before. To top it off, it was one of the hardest days riding yet – I would suggest every bit as challenging as my toughest day in the Swiss Alps. The hills were relentless, and you would get to the top of one, to realise that the road went over the hill for no apparent reason at all. And every single town in the region of Tuscany is apparently built right on top of a hill. I asked about this, apparently it is for defensive reasons. Centuries ago the relationship between Florence and Siena wasn’t exactly cordial, and during the Renaissance period of the 14th -15th century in particular, the artists and scholars and such from both towns were fiercely competitive.
And so I spent bout 5 hours cycling up and over these bloody hills, and when I finally rode into Siena, the first shop I found open was a McDonalds. I was loathe to go there knowing that there was probably good pizza down the road, but I was starving. Just to feel better and make up for this, I also had a huge pizza when I discovered the campground had a very good pizzeria on site.
I’ve now stayed in Siena for an extra night than I planned. In a way I like it better than Florence. It’s a little smaller, quite hilly but I left the bike at the campsite and spent a day walking around. The Piazza Ill Campo is something of a sight. This is where they hold the Il Palio horse race every year, fiercely contested between jockeys representing the various regions of Siena. The only rule during the race around the Piazza is that you are not allowed to pull the reigns on another jockey’s horse. Other than that it’s open slather and it gets pretty messy. I tried to time my visit to Siena with this pageant, but it just didn’t work out, so it’s on the list for something else to do in the future.
Anyway, I spent the rest of the day climbing the huge tower above the Piazza Il Campo, with views for miles in each direction. I even go a bit scared of how bloody high it was. It’s also very thin, I don’t know how the tower even remains standing and was glad to get to the top, get my photo and then get out. I was much happier sunning myself in the Piazza for a couple of hours reading my new book. Inspired by Malf and Dan, and having seen the first book in film in London – the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I am now reading the second in this Michel Blomvkist trilogy. It’s awesome, I thoroughly recommend it. (I’m assuming by now that ALL of you have finished reading my previous recommendation, Shantaram).
Off to Rome tomorrow. Joy!
