As amused as I was that I could say I’ve been to Pisa but didn’t see the Leaning Tower, my reporting responsibilities overruled my sense of humour and I got up early on the morning of my flight to dash up to the Piazza dei Miracoli. Lonely Planet compares this square, which also features Pisa’s Romanesque cathedral and baptistry, to Venice's Piazza San Marco as one of Italy’s most memorable. Having spent a full fifteen minutes there and not (yet) having been to Venice, I can say with complete authority that that’s rubbish. It’s boring. Apart from visiting these monuments there’s nothing to do. The piazza is all grass, surrounded by a wall and a street. There is no reason to linger, and indeed, nobody does. It is surprisingly sterile. And though I probably would have entered the cathedral had I had time, I don’t go in for tourist compulsions like climbing the Leaning Tower. I climbed the Eiffel Tower once, but only after I’d already been to Paris before, and I didn’t find it especially memorable. It’s not even good for a photograph; high panoramas or distant landscapes are also boring.
The art of photography is similar to the art of writing well: the writer should suggest the whole with just a detail, and allow the reader’s imagination to complete the picture. Landscapes are too vast and any subject is lost in the innumerable details. A good photograph doesn’t have too many competing subjects. There seems to be an inverse relationship between scale and interest: panoramas make as dull pictures as an entire chapter of description makes dull reading.
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Showing posts with label Pisa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pisa. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Monday, October 05, 2009
The Odyssey
First there was Tartarus.
It is not easy to get from the Siena train station, 2km out of town, to the historic centre. Usually I prefer to walk if I can, but Lonely Planet obscured the position of the station on their map with the reference listing. They say in the guide, “buses Nos 8, 9 and 10 run between the train station and Piazza Gramsci” at the edge of the pedestrianised old town. This is not entirely true, as it suggests a shuttle which goes to and fro. What they neglect to state is that the number 10 does not simply return to the train station. It continues on to tour the outlying Siena suburbs in a 40km loop, for which I waited 20 minutes to do on a bus with no shocks helmed by Slayer’s ex-drum roadie working the pedals over roads patched more times than a chain smoker gone cold turkey before being returned to the spot where I boarded. I understand that getting lost is part of travelling, but this is one time that the otherwise reliable Lonely Planet has failed.
I got off the bus where I got on and walked the two kilometres to the train station, where I found that the 18:41 train didn’t arrive or even exist, despite being posted on the timetable. The missing 19:18 must go to the same destination. So, I tried to catch the 19:41 which, according to the departures board, was leaving from platform 1 TR. At 19:38, when a train berthed at platform 1, naturally I boarded. But you see, Siena train station has six platforms, 1 through 5. It’s perfectly logical: there is a hidden platform, actually in the dark, at the far end of platform 1 and obscured by the building, called “Platform 1 Tronco (truncated).” When the train I boarded wasn’t moving by 19:45 I realised that it was indicating a different destination, and after some scrambling noticed somebody running into the dark at the end of the platform and boarding a train—my train—which promptly departed.
So, I finally caught the 20:18. In the end, it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get to Siena and five hours to return. I was aiming to get back before sunset so I could at least get a photo of the one thing I can now say I have not seen despite having been to Pisa—the Leaning Tower.
It is not easy to get from the Siena train station, 2km out of town, to the historic centre. Usually I prefer to walk if I can, but Lonely Planet obscured the position of the station on their map with the reference listing. They say in the guide, “buses Nos 8, 9 and 10 run between the train station and Piazza Gramsci” at the edge of the pedestrianised old town. This is not entirely true, as it suggests a shuttle which goes to and fro. What they neglect to state is that the number 10 does not simply return to the train station. It continues on to tour the outlying Siena suburbs in a 40km loop, for which I waited 20 minutes to do on a bus with no shocks helmed by Slayer’s ex-drum roadie working the pedals over roads patched more times than a chain smoker gone cold turkey before being returned to the spot where I boarded. I understand that getting lost is part of travelling, but this is one time that the otherwise reliable Lonely Planet has failed.
I got off the bus where I got on and walked the two kilometres to the train station, where I found that the 18:41 train didn’t arrive or even exist, despite being posted on the timetable. The missing 19:18 must go to the same destination. So, I tried to catch the 19:41 which, according to the departures board, was leaving from platform 1 TR. At 19:38, when a train berthed at platform 1, naturally I boarded. But you see, Siena train station has six platforms, 1 through 5. It’s perfectly logical: there is a hidden platform, actually in the dark, at the far end of platform 1 and obscured by the building, called “Platform 1 Tronco (truncated).” When the train I boarded wasn’t moving by 19:45 I realised that it was indicating a different destination, and after some scrambling noticed somebody running into the dark at the end of the platform and boarding a train—my train—which promptly departed.
So, I finally caught the 20:18. In the end, it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get to Siena and five hours to return. I was aiming to get back before sunset so I could at least get a photo of the one thing I can now say I have not seen despite having been to Pisa—the Leaning Tower.
The human bookcase
Flight routes to Croatia all end in September. The only feasible route for me to get from Portugal to Croatia in October is to fly RyanAir and stop over for three nights in Pisa, Italy.
This time, I avoided RyanAir’s excess baggage fees by wearing a fleece jacket stuffed full of six language phrasebooks, a book on philosophy, numerous maps and all my travel guides. I looked like a cross between a Series 4000 mechanoid and a geodesic dome.
It is ridiculously easy to get from the Pisa airport to my hotel. The airport and the train are not exactly modern, but the train trip takes literally five minutes, and my hotel is less than a hundred metres from Pisa Centrale. This was intentional; I am making two day-trips by train to Cinque Terre and to Siena, so I wanted to be close to the station.
This time, I avoided RyanAir’s excess baggage fees by wearing a fleece jacket stuffed full of six language phrasebooks, a book on philosophy, numerous maps and all my travel guides. I looked like a cross between a Series 4000 mechanoid and a geodesic dome.
It is ridiculously easy to get from the Pisa airport to my hotel. The airport and the train are not exactly modern, but the train trip takes literally five minutes, and my hotel is less than a hundred metres from Pisa Centrale. This was intentional; I am making two day-trips by train to Cinque Terre and to Siena, so I wanted to be close to the station.
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