"In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michaelangelo." ~T.S. Eliot
It had been decided that we would need to leave Oxford at 7am in order to make it to Stanstead in time to check in for our flight at 11.20 I duly set my alarm for 5am and while mostly I had everything ready, there were still one or two bits and pieces I would have to do in the morning. Of course, knowing that I faced such an early start, sleep eluded me entirely for most of the night and I'm not sure what time I drifted off - each time I looked at the clock it just seemed to be saying '5AM. YOU HAVE TO BE UP AT 5AM!!!' - though in the end I did sleep, and slept on peacefully right through the alarm. I finally opened one bleary eye to squint at the clock. It was now saying 'YOU'RE OVER AN HOUR LATE! GET UP! GET UP!! GET UP NOW!!!' 6.05 saw me trying to shave with one hand while pouring coffee down my neck, get dressed and feed the cat all at the same time. By 6.40 I was on the bike, my bulging case strapped somewhat precariously to the pillion, and fast filtering through the morning rush hour in to town whence I arrived only 5 minutes late.
My boss, naturally, was 10 minutes late.
The route to the airport is via some of the most murderously congested roads in the country, but today, mercifully, they were clear. We made the airport in good time, got checked in and were downing a leisurely Starbucks by just after nine.
The flight, naturally, was going to be over an hour late.
Ryan Air managed to mostly defy it's less salubrious reputation and the flight was actually quite pleasant. There was only one screaming baby and it was far enough back that it sort of blended with the whine of the jet engines. I buried myself in my Kindle and managed to tune them both out. We made good time to Pisa and disembarked down open steps to a bus waiting on the heat shimmered tarmac. Somehow open stairs on a plane, rather than a sealed tube injecting you directly into the arrivals hall, makes me feel like I'm in the 1950s. The bus took a while to fill, then drove forward maybe 50 yards (sorry, 50 metres) before it stopped and we all got off again. If they had parked the plane just slightly to the right there would have been no need for the bus at all. Immigration, passport control, and customs were quick and painless to the point of near non existence. Sorting the hire car took slightly longer, but sort it we did and were soon launched into the Pisan rush hour.
We had decided that we needed to go and see the eponymous leaning tower. How can you go to Pisa and not see the leaning tower? To be fair it was quite something to see such an iconic building in the flesh. Rather than looking smaller in real life as most things 'off the telly' tend to, it was actually imposingly and impressively large. I took lots of photos, though the most interesting photos to be had were of all the tourists on the green lining themselves up for the obligatory 'holding up the tower' shot. I didn't bother getting my own such shot; the tower can come crashing down for all I care it seems.
From Pisa we drove through the postcard perfect Tuscan countryside for Florence. Actually, in deference to my hosts, I'm going to call it Firenze from now on; which makes me think more of fire and Latin passion than of the little girl from The Magic Roundabout. The satnav took us most of the way around the ring road, but eventually, on a side street off a side street, we arrived at the apartment. Beautiful, cool, terracotta tiled floors, high ceilings, whitewashed walls, a little roof terrace outside my blissfully air conditioned room, and quite the flakiest wifi connection I've yet come across.
By the time everything was sorted and squared away it was nearly 9pm or, as it seems to be known in Firenze, almost dinnertime. Directly across from our apartment there happens to be a superb little pizzaria where we duly adjourned to eat. Dinner was a long and leisurely affair of pizza, gorgeous italian bread with olive oil for drizzling, ice cold beer and rich red wine. Actually the red wine was brought in error, but it was decided that rather than send it back we'd just order a bottle of white as well. I finished off my meal with my first cup of genuine Italian espresso; first of many I suspect.
After dinner we set off in to town in search of a gelateria to sample the legendary Italian ice cream. I wasn't convinced that we'd find many ice cream shops open at 10.30, but i couldn't have been more wrong: there seemed to be one on almost every corner. Firenze comes alive in the cool of the evening and the streets were thronged with people; people of all ages eating, strolling, or just lounging on the ornate marble steps in front of the cathedral.
It's one thing to think about the words café culture in the abstract and to ascribe our unsocialized youth and their binge drinking to our lack of such, but it's quite another to wander through streets where parking space is less important than space for tables and chairs, where every third door is a restaurant, and where the line between a bar and an icecream shop is so unimportant that it is dismissed with a shrug. I'm beginning to learn an important lesson about the Italian way of life I think. It's that languid cultural shrug of the shoulders: a shrug which says so much more than the surly sub-vocal 'I dunno' of a British teenager. Its a shrug which says 'Eh, why-a you worry about-a such-a things eh? The evening is-a warm, an-a the piazza is-a full of-a beautiful women. Come my friend. We drink-a the wine an-a toast the health of Il Pape in his palazzio in-a Rome, an-a give thanks that we are alive on-a such an evening.'
