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The Barbican

Saturday 6 January 2024 – Barbican, London

Happy New Year!

Another year has ended and a fresh one has begun; maybe this one will be better than the last, or maybe it will be worse, who knows? Not me. There’s an extra day this year so that could be the impetus for something positive happening; like an election in May for instance, and after 14 years we can have a more caring government in the UK.

Anyway, to be more positive; I’ve booked or planned quite a few activities for 2024 and already had two booked for January (A brutal day out and a first visit to Glasgow) before I last minute booked a two hour guided tour of the Barbican for Eleanor and I. I love the Barbican. It’s close to, if not the, top of the list of my favourite places in London. I love the architecture, the design and the build of the theatre and art centre, that its clean and tidy, that the cafes and bars are decent, albeit not cheap, and that there is no hassle from security for photographers. The last point being the most important.

The tour started at 3:00pm and there were about a dozen ‘tourists’, our guide was the best I’ve ever experienced. Knowledgeable, interesting and engaging; but not over the top, if you know what I mean. I really enjoyed the walk and learned a few things, most of which I’ve already forgotten. To be fair this isn’t supposed to be an architecture blog, though I guess it must feel like that sometimes; and yes the next post is also going to be loaded with photos of buildings made of concrete. I seem to have turned into a city-scape photographer. Roll on more travel in 2024.

We started the tour with a brief history of the estate and an introduction to the architects who designed the complex, a lot more of its interesting history was shared as we walked and the guide had some great photos from the past. The most interesting part of the introduction was the choice of materials used to surface the buildings. The original design called for white marble tiles, but the architects managed to dissuade the council who own the estate that concrete was the way to go; in polluted rainy 1950/60s London marble was not going to stay white and unstained for very long.

In a short passage behind a locked door was a concrete ‘sample board’; a long wall of different styles of concrete panels. This was used to influence the chosen ‘skin’ for all the buildings. We also learned that the concrete panels were cast on site then hand battered and drilled to provide the textured surface we see today. It was horrifically expensive in man hours and extremely damaging to the health of the men that did the battering and drilling.

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As the tour was quite late in the day, and it’s winter in London, daylight disappeared quite soon after we started. I took a few photos as we went, but ended up shooting so slowly it was hard to retain any focus. Having said that I have taken loads of photos here in the past, and am sure I will do so again so I wasn’t too concerned. I would quite like to come back for a night shoot, but suspect those friendly security folk will take a different view if tripods were involved. I’m going to add it to the list of possible shoots to do with my brutalist photography buddies.

So here are a small number of Barbican photos. The first camera outing of the year; there will be a few I hope. I’m planning on replacing my camera this year as I’m sick of lugging an old Canon 5d around with me. I love it as a camera, but it’s heavy and big and it’s time to downsize.

Horizon 22

Sunday 19 November 2023 – London.

Horizon 22 is the viewing area on the 58^th floor of 22 Bishopsgate, a 61 storey commercial tower in the heart of the City of London. Construction of the tower finished in 2020, though Horizon 22 only opened to the public at the end of September 2023. It is the highest public viewing platform in Europe, it’s magnificent, and it’s free; though you have to book tickets online.

The whole experience is very well managed, access is controlled, but there are loads of friendly staff herding the cat-like visitors and the viewing floor is vast and a work of architectural art in itself. The lift takes 40 seconds, is very quiet and mostly smooth.

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I could have been quite happy just taking photos of the viewing area. That is the top of The Shard, London’s tallest building poking up in the middle of the windows. I very much appreciated that this huge viewing area is not overloaded with visitors, so you can choose the view you want.

The viewing area has views over three-quarters of London, sadly the view out to the north east where we live is the bit that is missing. The views are stunning.

We were lucky that we had a clearish day, apparently the day before all you could see was cloud, and we did get some lovely light.

My feet are not this big; definitely a trick of the camera.

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Horizon 22 is a hard recommend for anyone, local or visitor. Book your free ticket, it’s worth it.

Brutal Day Out – Bethnal Green

Saturday 25 November 2023 – Bethnal Green, London.

One month until Christmas, wow, where has this year gone? I’m sure I’ve said it on numerous occasions in the past but the older I get the quicker the years go by. Sadly the same can’t be said for working days and weeks, they drag interminably. It’s now Christmas Eve eve, Eleanor is at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium watching Spurs beat Everton 2-1 and I’m home in the warmth drinking a large gin and tonic, listening to The Stooges and finalising this post. A win-win for both of us.

This was the fourth Brutal Day Out walk I’ve attended and it was the biggest yet, with 13 walkers, which made the group too big. Organising photographers is like herding cats and I liked it best when there was only half a dozen of us. It’s cool that the original group still come as I like all of them (a rare thing), and there are always good folk in the extended group, but it does make it slow going.

These walks are a good opportunity to see parts of London that most would not normally visit; housing estates for instance; and these were the focus of the walk today. There are a lot of 1960/70 estates in east London. We ended up being invited inside two tower blocks and made our way into a third by following someone in. All three we visited had the most incredible staircases, these buildings may look a bit drab and square and concrete on the outside, but the interiors are quite beautiful, as beautiful as concrete and basic function can get anyway. The first block we entered we were invited by an elderly resident who saw us outside with our cameras and phones and said we had to come in and look at the stairs, and they were pretty cool.

We met outside Mile End tube station, it’s a lovely clear day but very cold, and there is a biting wind, I’m glad I wrapped up warm. The light is a little harsh for architecture photography, or at least my type of architecture photography, but it’s nice to be outside under a a clear sky, it feels like it’s been a long time. Once the group had assembled we crossed the road and walked to our first destination, the Lakeview Estate, opposite Victoria Park. I was surprised to find it was so close to Mile End station; it’s good to be reminded that walking is the best way to learn how a city hangs together.

None of the buildings we visited today were brutalist masterpieces, at least that was the case from the outside and the Lakeview Building typified that. These buildings see the birth of the age of modernism in building construction. Designed in 1958 by the pioneering modernist architect, Berthold Lubetkin, for the then Bethnal Green Council it is an early example of how simple design and construction can be made into something aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes you need to look past the ‘bit ugly tower block’ and look for the details. Lubetkin’s work features a lot on this walk today.

I particularly liked the way the sun came though the open passages between the stairwell and the flats; I may have been moaning about the harsh sun earlier, but the way it caught the steam rising from a gas boiler vent was a highlight for me.

Our next stop was the nearby Cranbrook Estate, another Lubetkin design, though this was a much large estate than Lakeview, comprising of six low rise towers and a series of small blocks making up 529 homes. It opened in 1963.

After walking around taking photos of exteriors we were regrouping outside Modling House when one of the residents arrived home.

She asked what we were doing and once we told her we were interested in architecture she invited us into the building to look at the stairs, ‘because they’re lovely’. They were, though I’m not happy with the photos I managed to get of them.

13 photographers milling about in a small space does make it difficult. I was also conscious that this place is home for lots of people and just because we were welcomed in by one resident didn’t make us welcome by all. We took up a lot of space in the lobby, which in itself was photo-worthy. I like the clean lines and uniformity of the lobby which are verging on ‘Wes Anderson’-ish. Lovely.

The next two stops were quick, single towers, fenced off, similar in style and both designed by Denys Landon. The first is Trevelyan House.

The second is Keeling House; very similar in design to Trevelyn House, but with added scaffold.

Sivill House on Columbia Rd was my favourite building of the day, it wasn’t overly interesting to look at from the side we arrived on, with just a 19 storey brick cliff face with windows, though the other side of the building with its curved stairwell exposed was much more interesting. Completed in 1962 it’s another fine Lubetkin designed construction.

As with Modeling House earlier in the day we were invited inside to have a look at the stairs by one of the residents, though the stairwell is completely different; a 19 storey tightly wound circular staircase that would make anyone dizzy running down.

At the behest of the resident we took the lift to the 19^th floor to take a look down the lift shaft and to take in the amazing view from the top. I would have liked to explore this building a bit more, it looks fun.

Our last stop was the least inspiring for me, or at least the exterior was. However, James Bryne had the maddest staircase I’ve ever seen. I tried to take a photo of it from below but it didn’t work very well, there seemed to be loads of interconnecting short stair cases crisscrossing all over the show. It looked very confusing from underneath. I just took a photo of the entrance instead. It was way less mind boggling. The architects really were into curvy concrete stairs in the 50 and 60s, and I like that a lot.

From James Byrne house most of us went to a pub near Liverpool Street Station, I had a swift pint and then caught the tube back home. It was a good day out and I took an awful lot of photos!

Clifton Cathedral

Sunday 12 November 2023 – Bristol.

Eleanor’s youngest son and his partner moved from London to Bristol at the end of summer, his partner had recently joined me as a civil servant, but in another government department, and in Cardiff. They had been thinking about moving there for a while, it’s a city they know well and life there is much cheaper than London. It’s a city I feel fondly about too. This was to be our first visit to their lovely, slightly mad flat in the very nice suburb of Totterdown, near one of the steepest residential streets in England. It is certainly very steep!

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We caught the train down after work on Friday and came back early Sunday afternoon. In what seems to be the norm these days the Sunday journey was the least enjoyable due to cancelled and delayed trains causing our train to be over busy. We were lucky and managed to get seats for both journeys.

After a leisurely breakfast on Saturday morning we visited Bristol’s most visited area, Clifton; and not for of its famous bridge, nor for the loads of small independent shops, though we did do both of those as well. We went because I wanted to take some photos of Clifton Cathedral; Bristol’s Brutalist masterpiece.

Consecrated in 1973, Clifton Cathedral is a magnificent construction with one of the most unusual and beautiful spires I’ve seen. Between 1962 and 1965 the Second Vatican Council met in Rome to discuss the place of the church in the modern world. It was decided that the church needed to be closer to the people it served and this decision played a key part in the brave design of this building with the 1000 strong congregation much closer to the high altar. Sadly the doors were locked and I was unable to look inside.

Built in the ‘brutalist’ style out of precast concrete the building is all harsh angles and sheer walls. Many assume the word ‘brutalist’ has its root in the English word ‘brutal’, and in many cases there is clear argument that some brutalist buildings are quite brutal. However, the origins of ‘brutalist’ goes back to 1950s, to the French architect le Corbusier and the phrase ‘beton brut’, which translates to ‘raw concrete’. The cathedral is certainly that. It was also really hard to photograph, especially in the savage light that morning.

After stopping for a much needed coffee in a Clifton arcade that was extremely busy we walked up to the famous swing bridge. I’ve been here on numerous occasions before and always like visiting, it’s a marvellous structure; and it looks lovely backed with the autumnal trees.

As the evening dark descended we walked down from the heights of Totterdown to Bristol waterfront to find somewhere to eat. I was really surprised at how busy it was, everywhere was packed and we even found it hard to find a bar with a free table.

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Though I was wrapped up, I wasn’t wrapped up well enough and was quite cold all night, definitely not wanting to be sitting outside over a drink. We wandered around town a bit eventually finding a small Chinese noodle house where we had one of the best Chinese meals I’ve had in a long time, and with the restaurant not being licensed it was cheap to.

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The next day we had a late breakfast at a local ‘greasy spoon’ café and then schlepped back to London on an overcrowded train. We’re looking forward to going back to see more of Bristol, and I’m keen to visit Stokes Croft and St Pauls and the places I stayed in when my daughter lived here 10 years ago.

Florence to Pisa to London

Saturday 21 October 2023 – London.

Our last day in Florence and our last day in Italy, for this trip at least. I’m very keen on coming back as this has been a fantastic break and I’ve loved exploring Pisa and Florence. In some ways it was good we awoke to the forecasted heavy rain. I suspect if it had been gloriously sunny leaving would have been so much harder.

With a downpour going on outside and an evening flight back to London we took the morning slow; a lie in, followed by a big slow breakfast in the hotel, before checking out as close to tossing out time as possible. Departing the hotel fortunately coincided with a break in the rain. I loved the hotel, it was comfy and stylish and served lovely wine at a very nice price and the staff were lovely, I can see why Clive Myrie stayed here when filming in Florence. We chose to walk to the station as it was only 20 minutes away and we didn’t want a repeat of the bus related drama we had when we arrived. We made it to the station in time to get coffee and and a short wait for a train back to Pisa.

We had some loose good weather plans for the day, but they were immediately scrapped when we arrived in Pisa as it was absolutely hammering down, possibly the heaviest rain I’ve experienced in years. We had chosen to come back to Pisa earlier than needed as there is a left luggage office at the station, what we weren’t expecting was a 30 minute queue, luckily with seven rainy hours to kill we weren’t in any rush.

As we’d only been here a few days ago we knew there was a burger restaurant opposite the Keith Haring mural and that both the restaurant and mural were only 100 yards or so from the station. We waited in the very crowded station concourse for the worst of the downpour to stop before making a dash through a sadly washed out food and wine festival to get inside the restaurant before the rain came again.

We managed to draw out eating, what was a very nice burger, and drinking a glass of wine long enough for the heavy clouds to pass and some clear sky to appear. We were a bit damp, but so were most of the other customers who had also made a wet dash to the front door.

We walked across the River Arno and into the old town and walked around listlessly for while. We’re not good with killing time when we know there is a flight or an important train journey coming up; though there weren’t earlier flights with BA to book so it was what it was.

The rain appeared again, not so heavily this time, but we had had enough by then, so we crossed back across the river and walked up the main shopping street. This time I found a shop that sold corduroy trousers I liked, that actually fitted and weren’t way outside my budget. I bought a pair (and unlike some other holiday purchases I still like them now, almost two months later).

After killing a bit more time over a glass of wine in a small bar we collected our bags from left luggage and caught the tram to the airport. We were mega early, but once checked in settled for a couple of large slabs of pizza and more wine in the extremely over-crowded departure lounge. I was fortunate to spot a couple leaving one of the bar tables and manage to grab it before anyone else, so we actually had somewhere to sit, though stupidly I left my coat on the seat when we left to get on the plane. It did give me an excuse to buy a new one a few weeks later.

It was an absolutely lovely holiday. I know I always say this and I always fall in love with every town we stay in, but Florence is something special. If only I could do this all the time!

Florence, day two

Friday 20 October 2023 – Florence.

After the big day of walking and sightseeing yesterday it was a relief to be able to take it easy today. Without any time restricted bookings ahead we took a leisurely and enjoyable breakfast on the balcony of the hotel. It’s a nice to place to relax but the weather hasn’t really allowed us to make proper use of it before now. The ticket for the Uffizi yesterday also gave us access to Boboli Gardens and Palazzo Pitti, both nearby and on our side of the River Arno. We set out for our morning mission to visit them both once our breakfast had settled.

We really enjoyed the gardens, they are huge, though appear to be suffering in parts from the very dry weather. I imagine maintaining such a vast, and popular site is not easy in these times of uncertain weather. We entered from what possibly is considered the back entrance, though it had a great view up the central path leading up a hill which overlooked the river and central Florence, with views similar to those yesterday from Piazza Michelangelo.

There were a few statues scattered around the gardens, and I particularly liked the one that looks like two blokes doing the ‘holding up the Leaning Tower’ pose we saw so much of earlier in the week.

We had arrived at the gardens not too long after opening and it was very quiet, though as time passed and we got closer to the Pitti Palace the number of visitors grew.

There is a grotto in the gardens I wanted to see, though I was a little disappointed when I found it. Though it turns out there are two grottos and I had found the smaller one, the ‘Grotta di Madama, rather than the more impressive Grotta di Buontalenti. Both were built late in the 16 Century. Madama is presumed to reference Maria Maddalena the wife of Cosimo Medici who the gardens were originally designed for.

Purchased in 1550, the Palace was chosen by Cosimo Medici as the new Grand Ducal residence, and it soon became the new symbol of the Medici’s power over Tuscany. It also housed the Court of other two dynasties: the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (which succeeded the Medici from 1737) and the Kings of Italy from the House of Savoy, who inhabited it from 1865. Nonetheless the palace still bears the name of its first owner, the Florentine banker Luca Pitti that in the mid-1400s started its construction. It’s a fabulous huge building containing five different art museums. It was my favourite of the galleries in Florence, perhaps because I had no expectations compared to what I had for the others.

The art was secondary to the interior decoration, the walls and ceilings are just beautifully painted, admittedly extremely excessive and over the top, but glorious still.

For such a huge patron of the arts there are few works that feature Cosimo, and here he is looking quite imperious.

We found an exhibition in the Russian Art gallery with these giant stiletto shoes made entirely from pots and pot lids by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, they looked amazing and were a highlight of all the galleries we visited.

We left the Pitti Palace and stopped for a pasta lunch in one of the squares on the way back to our hotel. I love outside eating, glass of wine and some pasta. I could do this every day. This was definitely a tourist priced trattoria, but the food was very nice. Walking back to the hotel I found a few more of the shrines I’ve been enjoying over the past couple of days.

After an afternoon rest we went back across the River Arno to Florence’s centre in search of the buchetta del vino, the wine wall, we passed yesterday. It is top of my list of things to do in Florence. We found it easily enough but annoyingly it didn’t appear open.

It was too early to eat so we wandered about the centre of Florence for a while, pretty randomly will say, finally stumbling on a few streets with shops that weren’t global brands. I was looking for corduroy trousers, though I didn’t find any that fitted that I liked. There are some very well dressed men in Florence, I would guess most of those were local, us tourists are way more casual! Completely by accident we found an open wine wall, yay! We had to queue for a few minutes and received our glasses of wine just as the heavens opened and it poured. We joined some of the other wine window guests standing in a small private car park out of the rain. It was very nice, proper stemmed glass as well, none of the plastic cups you would get in England.

Naturally we didn’t have umbrellas today. Once the worst of the downpour had passed we started the walk toward the hotel.

Crossing the Arno again I spotted a small murmation of, I guess swifts, over one of the other bridges and we stopped to watch them as they flitted back and forth across the bridge. Our dinner was taken in a small local restaurant as the rain was coming down quite heavily and we didn’t want to go to far. It was our first non-vegetarian meal in Florence and I had fish which was really nice. Annoyingly the rain would remain for most of tomorrow, our last day in Italy.

Another fabulous day I love Florence!

Florence, day one

Thursday 19 October 2023 – Florence.

It continued to rain overnight but we were fortunate during the day and I rarely needed to use the umbrella I borrowed from the hotel after stupidly leaving mine at home. It was a really busy day with pre-booked tickets to two of the big attractions; the Accademia and Uffizi Galleries. Our entry time for the Accademia was at 9:15 so we had a hurried continental style breakfast in the hotel; cold meats, cheese, pastries and bread etc, all washed down with a good cup of coffee, or three. I liked it.

It rained enough on the 30 minute walk to find the ticket office to need the umbrella and get some rain on the cobbles, yay!

High on my list of minor things to see or do in Florence was to find a buchetta del vino, or wine window and I was surprised to find one as we walked to the ticket office. It was too early in the day for it to be open so we made a note of the location with the intention of going back later.

We walked past the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore when we took a slight mis-turn, and wow! What an amazing building. We didn’t have tickets for this and it has been left on the list of things to do when we come back to Florence, which is something I want to do.

The Accademia was impressive! I guess its main reason for being a huge tourist attraction is it has the original Michelangelo David statue; and boom! it’s pretty much the first thing you see once you get through the front door. The statue is impressive, it’s much bigger than I expected, and yes the hands are weirdly large, but it is a beautiful thing and I was surprised about how few people were in the room. I expected it to be packed. Like the experience in Pisa, not overcrowding a venue because you can, makes visiting attractions much more pleasant.

The Accadamia is big; there is lots of renaissance art; there are spectacular pieces by loads of well known artists, but it’s not a period I really like. I mean the art is amazing, beautiful and it’s so good to be able to be up close to it, but I wasn’t wowed by it. I liked this work of Michelangelo’s that was in a series of statues that he had started but never finished before leaving Florence to Rome in 1534.

There were a lot tour bus tourists and it was interesting watching them file in and out of the gallery without going up to the first floor with its large collection of religious works from before the renaissance. I quite like some of the work from this period; it’s quite ‘simple’ and almost cartoony in a way. I was reading a book about the Medici before and while we were away and it noted that Cosimo Medici was torn between the strict Catholicism of 14^th century Italy and Humanism, and during his time as the head of the Medici family and their vast investment in art religious that human figures started to appear more natural and less ‘cartoony’.

After leaving the Accademia we wandered around in many different circles, walking up streets and lanes as they took our fancy. This is what I like most about holidaying. We stopped for coffee outside a church with a memorial to Dante.

There are a lot of what I’m calling shrines in Florence and they are very well cared for and I absolutely love these early forms of street art.

The Porta del Paradiso aka the Gates of Paradise, are found on the back of the baptistery, opposite the cathedral and they are stunning, though the original gates are in a museum. Created by the goldsmith and sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1425 and 1452 the gates are stunning with beautiful motifs of scenes from the bible.

The weather was still in pour favour so walked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo on the far side of the River Arno.

It was a steep, short walk up this magnificent viewing point over Florence and a copy of the Michelangelo’s David Statue.

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We could see very dark clouds looming over the far side of the city so decided to head back down and get back to the centre before the rain returned; and for the pre-booked visit to the famous Uffizi Gallery.

The gallery is amazing, again, not too crowded but enough people to give a buzz.

The building is beautiful, with lovely ceilings, walls and everything surrounding the treasured works of art in the gallery, including a couple of lovely Botticelli works from the late 15 century.

We took a slow stroll back to the hotel after the Uffizi. Walking the streets is such a joy; the cobbles, the narrow alleys between tall buildings, the small number of cars, the random pieces of art, so many things that make strolling an obvious first choice. We took a rest for a while before heading out early in the evening for dinner in another excellent vegetarian restaurant ; L’OV Osteria.

It was another lovely day. I’m really enjoying our Italian stay!

Pisa to Florence

Wednesday 18 October 2023 – Florence.

As anticipated the rain came in the early hours and was still with us when we got up. With no early attractions booked and a checkout at 10:00 there was no need to move fast. We had breakfast at the same café as yesterday, and we had the same breakfast, though unlike yesterday the place was packed. I guess no-one was rushing out into the weather. We were very pleased we had the opportunity to climb the Leaning Tower yesterday when it was sunny. I discovered this morning that I’d left my umbrella at home. I realised I hadn’t packed in the middle of the night the night before we left but had completely forgotten I’d had that thought by the time I got up. At least I’d remember to pack a rain coat, or two.

After breakfast we packed and then took a rapid walk, sheltering where possible, to Pisa Station to get a train to Florence. We were lucky and got most of the way to the station between heavy showers, though the last 100 yard dash was in a sudden downpour.

We’ve taken the approach of dealing with today one action a time rather than trying to book and plan things ahead, so we arrived at the station with no stress about getting pre-paid tickets and finding a specific train. As expected it was all very easy and there were plenty of working ticket machines and they were simple to use. Train travel in Italy (like all of Europe) is significantly cheaper and easier than the UK. It poured with rain all the way to Florence, but I didn’t care.

I was kinda of expecting the view from the train to be all beautiful Tuscan villages and green rolling hills layered in vines and fruit and olive trees. For the first quarter of the journey we seemed to be passing industrial estates, (yeah, yeah). It was not as scenic as expected. There wasn’t a lot of interesting things to see but I enjoyed gazing out the window anyway.

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The journey to Florence took an hour and it was still raining when we arrived. We had planned to get a bus from the station to the hotel we had booked so joined the queue for the bus ticket machine. It was slow, then got slower and more and more people crowded around trying to help those in front to get tickets; it turned it had basically stopped working. We both downloaded the bus company app to our phones and I managed to get a reliable enough connection to pay for two tickets. Annoyingly the tickets didn’t arrive in the app, grrr. I tried again with a different card and the same happened. Double grrr, though the language actually used was a lot more ‘colourful’ shall we say. I wasn’t a happy bunny. We thought sod it, lets take a cab, but the cab queue was absolutely huge; apparently there was a big football related event at the Fiorentina stadium out of town and all the cabs were taken up ferrying big wigs out there. Eleanor managed to actually buy two tickets for the bus on her phone so we joined the bus queue.

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There was a sign board telling when buses were coming though it was as useless as the app. I got grumpy standing in the rain and when the bus arrived after 30 minutes t was packed; though we managed to squeeze on and our stop was only four away from the station on the far side of the River Arno, so it wasn’t terrible.

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The hotel Ad Astra was a two minute walk from the bus stop and I suspect they don’t get too many guests who arrive by bus carrying a wet backpack, though they were very welcoming! It’s a lovely place, our room was gorgeous and the staff are fabulous. the hotel backs onto the largest private garden in Florence, though the garden isn’t accessible by guests. It almost had a country villa feel to it. The presenter Clive Myrie stayed and filmed here when he made his recent BBC series on Italy,

After unpacking we had a glass of wine in a shelter on the hotel deck and unwound after the morning; writing notes, reading and gazing out over the very peaceful garden.. We had an early evening table booked in a vegetarian restaurant in a book shop so didn’t do much in the late afternoon before leaving for a slow walk to dinner.

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I’d loved Pisa and its lanes and old buildings, the slight smell of damp and sewers, its age and history, but it has nothing on Florence. Florence is just amazing and by the end I never wanted to leave. The Ad Astra is located on the southern side of the River Arno, the opposite side to the centre, in the Oltrarno district. It’s a nice area, old of course, less busy than the centre, but there are still nice places for coffee, wine and food. It is my sort of place and I would stay in Oltrarno again for sure. Like Pisa, Florence felt like a safe place to walk and get lost in, there always seemed to be others out walking the streets and at no time did I feel we were unsafe, it is a tourist town after all. Like Pisa there were few cars moving on the roads outside of the various rush hours and this made walking around almost a joy. There are still lots of motor scooters and cyclists, though in general they were polite and not intimidating.

We reached the Arno as the sun was dropping below the horizon, sadly not a night for a sunset over the Ponte Vecchio, Florence’s most well known and loveliest bridge.

We passed Plazzio Uffizi, which we will visit tomorrow, one of the many places I’m super excited about visiting over the next few days. The Uffizi Gallery is one of the major tourist attractions and we have pre-booked tickets for tomorrow afternoon.

Dinner at Libreria Brac was delicious, I wasn’t expecting to find excellent vegetarian or vegan food here as Tuscany is quite a meaty region. It was busy so must be doing something’s right. We had vin santo for desert and OMG! I’ve not had this before and can’t believe I’ve missed it for the 61 years I’ve been on earth. Vin santo (holy wine) is a luscious thick and very sweet, dessert wine, it comes with a small plate of cantuccini, a typical Italian hard biscuit, that you dunk into the wine and let it soak a bit before munching the biscuit. Lovely. I had it every night and it will be a Christmas treat this year.

With very full bellies it was a slow meander back to the hotel. There is always one more narrow street to take a photo of.

This bust is in the entrance to our hotel. The building has been owned by the same family for a very long time and I wonder if this was an ancestor?

I was loving Florence!

Pisa

Tuesday 17 October 2023 – Pisa.

I was surprised, and pleased, to wake up under a clear blue sky. It was unexpected as the forecast had shown rain for most of the week. The B and B room came with a voucher for a coffee, pastry and a glass of juice breakfast in a café around the corner. The café was very modern and could have been anywhere in the world, though it was the only really modern place we entered on the trip. I liked it and the coffee was superb; as was most of the coffee we had in Italy. Coffee is important, as is red wine, and I had lots good wine too; just not for breakfast.

Our first, and only appointment, of the day was a 9:15 visit to the Leaning Tower. We’d booked online for an early visit to get in before the rush. It was still busy, but not as busy as it was later in the day. We arrived early so took a walk around the site, popping outside the ancient city walls to look at the souvenir stalls (Messi, Neymar and Mbappe shirts. None of whom played football in Italy, let alone Florence). Eleanor was looking for a dayglo David statue, though she didn’t find one here.

I’m glad we got into the queue to enter the tower early as we were advised that bags were not allowed inside, and that free baggage storage was nearby. I should quickly note that the organisation at the big attractions we went to in both Pisa and Florence was utterly superb. Walking into the base of the tower I was surprised to see it was completely hollow, with just a stairwell winding round the empty core. What was very weird, though on reflection it should’ve been expected, is the floor slopes inside. It felt really odd walking into a building that sloped downhill.

Construction of this most famous of towers began in the twelfth century from a design by the architect Diotisalvi (possibly as there are contentions about the original architect) and it started to tilt almost immediately due to the soft ground it is built on.

The bell tower was added in 1372 to finish off the build. By the time remedial works starts in 1990 it was leaning at a precarious 5.5 degrees. It is now stable at 3.97 degrees, though it looks worse. There are seven bells in the tower, one for each musical note. The largest bell was installed in 1655.

Though free standing, it was built as the bell tower for the cathedral nearby, the construction of which started in 1064. It also tilts, but only slightly. The cathedral, tower, baptistery and the monumental cemetery make up the Piazza dei Miracoli, a UNESCO world heritage site, and it is all rather lovely. I wanted to visit the baptistery as it’s supposed to have the most magnificent interior of all the monuments, but it was closed in this off-season for renovation work.

There are 251 steps to the top of the tower and one bi-directional staircase. Visitor numbers are, as you would expect, restricted, so it wasn’t too busy, though passing those coming down as we headed up was tight in some spaces. There were some conveniently placed ‘viewing’ stops on the way up; puff, puff…

The view from the top was, as you’d imagine, wonderful. We were lucky with the day as the rest of the week was rainy or cloudy or both. We got the view. It was a little un-nerving standing outside at the top, when you leave the stairs you come out on to a fairly level platform, but as you walk round and get to the section where the tower is tilting down its slightly unpleasant. A narrow marble step, tilting down and eight storeys up. Not my thing. It was nice going back down to the ground. It was fantastic going up though; it’s a marvellous construction and should be on everyone’s to do list.

Back at ground level the tour bus tourists had arrived in force; there were thousands, and this is off-season. I wanted to mock the dozens of folk striking the various Instagramable ‘holding up the tower’ poses, but it was somewhat endearing, though I’m way too cool to do it myself, obviously.

After the rush of the tower and the exquisite view the cathedral was a little ‘meh’, maybe I’ve been in too many. I mean it’s huge and beautiful and the art is stupendous, but I’ve seen it all before; there was some repair work going on as well so scaffold all over the place and I guess that broke that special ambiance of sacred places. At least they didn’t have builders radio going.

The doors of the cathedral are fabulous, with intricate bronze carvings from 1602 in panels on all the doors. I particularly loved this panel where centuries of visitors have been rubbing the naked bum…

After collecting our bags from the baggage office and stopping for coffee and a snack at a nearby tourist joint (expensive) we took to the streets of old town Pisa and wandered randomly for a few hours. I very much enjoyed it.

We crossed the River Arno, which also flows through Florence, we will cross it a few times there as well, and took in an avantgarde exhibition in Palazzo Blu which was really interesting. other than the tower there was one other thing we both wanted to see in Pisa and that was Keith Haring’s Tuttomonda mural. Painted in 1989 it was one of the artist’s final works. It’s huge and rather beautiful and we return here on our final day.

We meandered back towards the B and B, ducking in and out of narrow cobbled streets as the fancy took us. I immensely enjoyed the walking in both Pisa and Florence; there are cars, just not many, and away from the main roads people mainly walk in the street. It’s the way it’s always been and will continue to be as more and more young folk (and some of the not so young) choose to not rely on a car to get around. I also enjoy walking down narrow lanes surrounded by 4 or 5 storey residential buildings; these places feel lived in with a sense of community and I always want to live in one. Though I know the ‘sense of community’ is likely just as much as a fantasy as my dream of a perfect local pub that only really exists on the telly; at least in England anyway. I particularly like the religious images on the walls, the small shrines, and the paintings with a donation slot on the side of churches. This is all so not-England, or New Zealand.

We stopped for lunch (gnocchi for me and a duck bolognaise for Eleanor) and a glass of wine or two in a café on a small square surrounded by young folk from the nearby university. It was entirely pleasant and energising, though we did go back to the B n B for a brief rest after eating. The B n B is just off another, larger square, through a small road arch with the most remarkable and faded painted ceiling that I know nothing about, and don’t want to. It looks very old and the fact it is just there in the street with cars and bikes and pedestrians passing through, or stopping for a smoke and shelter from the rain, is just lovely.

The building our room in has a small shrine on it.

Our final tourist activity was to head back to the Piazza del Miracoli (or Piazza del Duomo depending on who you read) to visit the Camposanto, the memorial cemetery. Construction started in 1277 to house the growing number of graves that were scattered around the cathedral grounds.

The frescoes that cover every wall were finally finished 200 years later. It was my favourite building in Pisa and I’m very glad we decided to visit. The frescoes are amazing and in hindsight I wish I’d spent more time looking at them. Work continues to restore the site and it seems to be being done very sensitively, the work done on the frescoes for instance looks almost as dated as the originals.

My favourite was the depiction of the torment of sinners in hell. It reminded me of similar works I saw in SE Asia and I love that no matter the religion there is always eternal damnation for those who transgress the, often arbitrary and confusing, rules.

The site houses numerous statues and memorials of wealthy and famous Pisans from the past, including Finobachi, the father of mathematics as we now know it. With Michelangelo, Galileo, De Vinci and others Tuscany was well endowed with visionaries.

There are a number of plague death victims here too. The plague didn’t really care who you were or how much money you had when it visited.

We wandered the streets again, stopping for a magnificent gelato before heading out for the evening. We hoped to find a bar to watch England host Italy in an international football match, but we didn’t have any luck so watched it on the TV in the room. We were exhausted and it was only day one, but man it was a good day. I really could holiday forever.

I will give a hard recommend for Pisa, and if you read this and want to visit, stay overnight and walk to the tower, it’s magnificent and comparatively peaceful; then book your tower visit early the following day.

A night in Pisa

Monday 16 October 2023 – Pisa.

I’ve not been to Italy since 1986, sort of. I spent 48 hours on a bus from Bari to London, after getting off a ferry from Athens in 1987, but I don’t recall anything more than getting off the ferry and taking a seat in on the bus. It was a long journey a long time ago. I’ve never been to Pisa, Florence or anywhere else in Tuscany. Weirdly Tuscany and its famous towns haven’t been very high on my ‘must visit’ list until recently, and I lay that positive change squarely at the feet of the actor Stanley Tucci and his fabulous recent BBC series on Italy through the lens of Italian food. Surely, Pisa’s famous leaning tower should have been on my list of wonders of the world/monumental architecture that I must visit, but it wasn’t. That was rather stupid.

Eleanor hasn’t been to Florence or Pisa either so it was the ideal location for a week way, cunningly planned by me to be at the end of the main tourist season, but the week before most schools have their mid-term break. It was so cunning that there were still thousands of people there, but not tens of thousands. I took too many photos and we had too good a time to try and fit things into a single post so this one will just cover the first day, or rather, night we spent in Pisa. I suspect the holiday will take a few days to write up and the photos even longer to edit. I’m happy to say it was a wonderful week away; other than the torrential rain on the last day.

I’ve been finding it difficult to book holidays these last couple of years, I’m wanting to be more eco-friendly and use trains were I can, I’m not worried about the slower journey, but Christ, going anywhere by train from the UK is expensive. Flights have gotten expensive as well, so it took an age to find something that suited our budget and timing, and my desire to never fly Ry*n Air or E*syJ*t again. We flew BA out of Heathrow on a very convenient mid-afternoon flight, arriving in Pisa just after dark. It’s much less stressful travelling later in the day.

We had a lovely room in a B and B a ten minute walk from the tower so set off soon after dropping our bags to get a quick glimpse before the tour we’ve booked for 9:15 tomorrow. We stopped for food and a drink on the way at a small osteria (a local wine bar serving simple food, usually without a menu). They only served one thing, a massive plate of cheese, preserved meat, olives and the local pomodoro, something I’ve never had before; a mix of tomato, garlic, olive oil and bread mashed into a gooey paste and spread on bread. With a glass of local red wine it was a perfect introduction to Tuscan eating.

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After eating we headed off to find the tower, before discovering that my sense of direction was 180 degrees out of whack and we were going the wrong way. We realised this as we arrived at the River Arno, 10 minutes in the wrong direction. The good thing about walking around these ancient towns is no walking is wasted, every narrow, cobbled street is unique to my day to day existence. I felt like I can walk here forever and there will always be something new to see.

I never really recovered my sense of direction after that early blow. However, we did get back on track and eventually hit upon the right path, following a noisy group of ‘jocks’ that really didn’t lift my feelings about Americans overseas, though, admittedly they had better map reading skills than me. We’d just passed the ‘jocks’ along a fairly typical Pisan narrow, gully-like street when we popped out into a square and ‘boom’ there it was, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, gloriously lit and looming imperiously above the buildings surrounding the square. It was a proper OMFG moment. I was unexpectedly and massively excited to see it. It’s magnificent, but not as tall as I expected.

It was only a couple of minutes more to the area around the cathedral and tower. Surprisingly, there were hardly any other people there and we got to wander about and take photos pretty much as we pleased.

We went for a walk around the old town, not getting too misplaced too often now I knew my usually reliable sense of direction wasn’t working. I really like it here, it has a decent vibe and I’m loving the old architecture. At night it had the feel of an ex-European old town somewhere in SE Asia, a little bit crumbly, mouldy and close, and there was a slight smell of sulphur and drain to add to the illusion of being somewhere ancient and barely discovered. I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow when we can explore in the daylight.