A Pisa cake

I packed my bags and went by taxi to Paris Orly airport because apparently there was a train strike on. The French sure do know how to do a strike. After paying excess baggage for stupid Easyjet I went through security to realise I had a metal corkscrew with the little knife on the edge. I handed it over to security and they just put it in the plastic tray with my mobile/wallet/laptop. It went through the xray machine, the security guy just picked it up, opened and closed it a couple of times to check it and handed it to me. Obviously in France a man should always be able to get to his wine.

When I arrived in Pisa, I checked in and went for a walk to the tower. It had quite the lean to it I have to say. Then I went around and took some photos of the people taking perspective photos, holding it up, pushing it over etc. I was starving by now and hadn't really eaten much all day. I grabbed a lasagne and a birra alla spina then realised I needed to learn at least a bit of Italian to get by if I was going to eat as the lady there had no Inglese. The lasagne had no tomato in the meat and very little white sauce. I think the brown "bolognese" is tipici della regione. 

A field of clever perspective photographers

I thought the city was quite beautiful

but I am a sucker for walled cities

I walked  around a bit and thought Pisa was a pretty nice city especially down near the river, I had heard a lot of bad things. I don't know if you'd want much more than a night there though. Later after sorting out mobile phone SIM with Vodofail Italia, I went out for dinner and went to this place called Lo Schiaccianoci. Luckily I had a smart phone for directions because there was no way I was pronouncing it to ask someone. Anyway this place was great, family run joint, good prices and I had my first spaghetti alla vongole on my first night in Italy which I was pretty wrapped with. The guy that runs the place, lets just call him "Il Padrino", asked me if I wanted dolce and since the first 2 courses were so good, and it had been at least 3hrs since the lasagne I said "si". Il Padrino just patted me on the back and said "I will fix a plate for you." It was an offer I couldn't refuse. Anyway out came a plate with 2 slices of cake and a mini pana cotta, of course I finished it all off.

The next day I grabbed une espresso and headed to the airport to meet my lovely wife to start our Italian trip together. Instructions from Heidi were to meet at the car hire place so I went there and sorted out the car. After waiting for nearly 30 minutes I thought it was a bit unusual for Heidi to be this late but just sat tight. Eventually about 2-3 emails came through at once telling me where she was, which was back at the terminal about 5 minutes away. I grabbed the car and drove back to the terminal, except the ramp I thought which went back to the airport was actually the autostrade (highway) with lots of other Italian cars travelling at ridiculous speeds. Anyway I found the way back through the town which seemed to be about twice as many left turns as is normally required to go back in the opposite direction. Finally I picked Heidi up and we headed to Cinque Terre. Along the way we tried to stop in at a place for lunch called Porto Vennere or something, apparently we missed it, I am not sure exactly where we ended up but I did manage to get my first lot of Italian tomatoes and lardo brushcetta. Yessss that's right, fat on toast. Pretty good.

Mmmmmm lardo