The Sights of Italy – Siena, Florence and Pisa

The Brenner Pass was beautiful in the snow and the early spring sunshine. It bought back lots of memories of crossing it nearly 20 years ago on my first overland trip from London to Kathmandu. That was also in March and this time I was very thankful that our truck is well insulated, then I was peeping out of a back of an open truck with canvas sides.....freezing! Motorway driving is a breeze and with the stat nav it is relatively easy finding places, until roadworks or a misunderstanding take you on a wrong turn once you've reached a town. That's when you realise how difficult to manoeuvre a ten and a half tonne truck as a new driver on a small city street. However, Steve has been brilliant and we've not hit anything, even a curb yet....but the girls have heard quite a few "new" words. Siena was our first stop in Italy, a view of the historical centre from our camping spot got us all in the mood for the following day's exploring. 20130331-203502.jpg Rather surprisingly walking we've found wandering around ancient cities at a 4 year old's pace has been rather refreshing, there has been lots of time to gaze up at the amazing architecture. Lucy found the pigeon chasing in front of the Duomo the best bit though. 20130401-120625.jpg That night was our first barbecue, rather chilly with it only being 10 degrees but the aim of this trip is to try everything out, so on went the sausages. We are really impressed with the Cobb oven and think it will be capable of cooking far more adventurous things than the handful of bangers we used for its trial run. 20130401-120708.jpg After Siena, we decided on a couple of nights in Florence, this wasn't on our original plan but that's the beauty of this trip. Fabulous campsite within walking distance of the city and we fully enjoyed both the sights and the restoring gelato on the way up the hill back to the site. Unfortunately we didn't make the Ufizi but I'm sure we'll back another time when the girls are older. 20130401-121955.jpg 20130401-121239.jpg 20130401-121250.jpg 20130401-121259.jpg 20130401-121313.jpg 20130401-121330.jpg20130401-121322.jpg 20130401-121336.jpg The campsite at Pisa presented both lots of tricky corners and lots of mud. It was also Steve's birthday, so another first for our truck living....making birthday cake. Surprisingly, the chocolate cupcakes turned out far better than we've made in a long time. Better still we ate them hot after lunch before heading in to town to look at the tower. 20130401-121524.jpg Both steve and I were bowled over by the tower, we had quite low expectations after all the hype but the square, cathedral and the tower were just beautiful. We felt we just "had" to take the cheesy holding the tower up snaps. We passed by them again on the way home from exploring and dinner to see them all lit up and quiet. . 20130401-121631.jpg 20130401-121640.jpg Lucca was the plan the following morning but with the torrential rain, no space to camp and Lucy running a slight fever we decided to press on to Lake Como.

2 thoughts on “The Sights of Italy – Siena, Florence and Pisa

  1. Love the picture of the Duomo at night! Sorry that you had to forego Lucca (a favorite site of ours from our honeymoon), but isn’t it nice to have the luxury of not adhering to a strict itinerary? So looking forward to tagging along on your adventure.

  2. brilliant to be able to follow you and see photos as you go. keep it up and good luck for rest of trip and getting back into your driveway! lovely to talk yesterday.
    Mum xx

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