Lucca

Exactly a year a go today I was in the beautiful, tiny town of Lucca in Tuscany. Last Autumn I was working as an au pair in Rome and visited Pisa and Lucca for the weekend with two other lovely au pairs, Allyson and Jordan.
I have a slight case of itchy feet at the moment, even though I spent a month in west Africa over the summer I'd still love to do another trip somewhere this year. Until thats possible I'm looking back at old pictures.
This is a bit of a photo dump really, and my camera had run out of batteries so they're mostly taken with my phone and are not the best quality.

I'd never really heard of Lucca, but we wanted to climb the leaning tower of Pisa and Lucca is close by. We spent the first day of the weekend in Pisa and got to Lucca at about 4 in the afternoon. There was a large organised run happening over the weekend which led to an already touristy town being rather packed.
We checked in to the lovely hostel we were staying in, bought food from a supermarket and had a bench picnic, then wondered around trying to find somewhere with a bit of atmosphere. Lucca is quiet after dark!

The next day, after breakfast of coffee in the most beautiful enclosed piazza, we climbed towers, walked along the fortified walls that surround the town, had amazing food at a confusing restaurant/ take away, ate fancy chocolate and wondered into huge churches that contained a mummified skeleton on display and a decorated black Jesus.

 

 

 

 

   

Pisa

Way, way back in October, while I was living in Rome, I went to to sweet little towns of Pisa and Lucca in Tuscany with two lovely ladies, Allyson and Jordan.
Allyson and I left Rome early in the morning before it was properly light and caught the train to Pisa, we watched the sun rise over the countryside and the coast.

 We met Jordan at Pisa. It was our first big trip away from Rome for both Allyson and I and all three of us were happy to be spending a weekend away from our au pair host families. However fun being an au pair is and however great the family is, it still feels a bit stifling after awhile not really having the freedom to come and go as you please and having to worry about getting home at a certain time.

We wondered around and poked into little shops and markets and got coffee and chatted about Beyonce.

We were not exactly sure where the tower was, Jordan had a map that we were sort of following but mostly we just wondered through the town and spotted it looming over the place.

We went and took all the touristy pictures and bought tickets to go up the tower for later in the day.

After walking back through town and taking pictures of cats and fancy buildings we had lunch and then walked back to the tower to climb it!

I was a bit nervous climbing up, I know I'm a bit rubbish with height, especially if I'm not holding on to anything, Doing the Go Ape challenge earlier in the year made me expect to be terrified but it wasn't really too bad. (although maybe that's my memory two months later, I was pretty scared up there, and had to have dark chocolate and wine later in the day)
The view was spectacular, I don't think we could've had a better day weather wise.

About half the walk up the tower is inside, a spiral staircase then the top levels are out in the open.The tower is so slanted that I did feel a bit as if I might slip off the tower on the outside parts. After all the excitement we wondered back through Pisa to catch the train to Lucca. We got slightly distracted by this beautiful shop

 But whats that in the top left hand corner? A pile of rusty metal objects? This required further investigation.

The shop also had fancy cakes and drinks and ice cream, but I wanted a key.

My key broke before I took a good picture, It was rather nice dark chocolate with cocoa powder rust, yum yum. we ate it on the train to Lucca.

Noses

 

Strolling around Villa Borghese a week or so ago, I noticed these fine gentlemen.

I'm not entirely sure who they are or their significance but they all seem to be suffering some sort of nasal problems.

Two have completely lost their noses and the other two have slightly miss fitting noses.

I love on the broken nosed men that they have a small spike on which to attach a new nose and I'm quite taken with the idea of having several spare noses to wear whenever the mood struck you. A bit like Mr Potato head, you could swap pieces over to give you an entirely new look.

Playing with my camera

I realised a week or so ago that my camera can do this amazing magical thing where it sews pictures together all by itself- each picture takes a couple of tries from me to line things up but its so great. I love having these bigger pictures and I really like the way the first one plays with your sense of perspective.
First two pictures are in the Pantheon, the last one is the column in Piazza Colonna- there is another very similar column near to Il Vittariano, neither of them is mentioned in my guidebook so I don't really know anything about them, they're so different from other columns and relief work I've seen and I really like them

Angels and Demons

1)I am living in Rome
2)I like reading books
= reading "Angels and Demons"

Since coming to Rome I've been trying to find a copy of "Angels and Demons", with a couple of other au-pair girls I know we've been hunting through every bookshop that has even one shelf of English books to see if they had a copy. Finally on sunday I found a copy at a large branch of  la Feltrinelli, ( a big chain of bookshops). It cost 11.30 euros- far too much! but I was so pleased to find it and I was just wondering around by myself so I splashed out and bought it.

I have actually read the book previously and I saw the  film when it was in the cinema but over the years it got a bit confused in my head with "The Da Vinchi code".
I should preface my review by saying that I am a fan of some really trashy books- I've read the Twilight books several times, I'm happy with my nose in a Marion Keyes,  but this is a bad book and not in a so bad its good way. Its not the main storyline that I have a problem with, secret societies and cults are always going to interesting and sensationalist, I have a problem with factual inaccuaracies, racial stereotyping and lazy research.


Firstly I have an issue with the fact that the bad/ violent/ evil character is an unnamed middle eastern supposedly Muslim man with a massive grudge against the Catholic church and a huge appetite for sex and violence.
The book is about the established Catholic church and science, it just plays into lazy racial stereotyping to have all the violence perpetrated by this supposed Muslim character- not cool.

My other main problem with the book is that the action in Rome seems to have been written by someone without much knowledge of Rome and maybe without studying a map.
For example the lead characters go to Santa Maria della Vittoria to see the Ecstasy of St Theresa apart from they don't, they go to Piazza Barberini. The piazza is very close to the church and if you're going to the church then the metro stop Barberini is your absolute best bet but the church isn't in the piazza at all, its a good 5 minutes walk up hill to the church, you cannot see the church from the piazza or the piazza from the church- there is no logical reason for the characters to be in the piazza and to hang about there.

There is another point when some other characters are trying to find Piazza del Popolo. If you've ever been to Rome and even glanced at a map you will know where Piazza del Popolo is because several main roads feed into it, it looks like the top point of a triangle, it is not at all hard to find.

Then there are small instances that are just wrong- there is journalist who is mentioned as working for British Tatler but is supposed to have written shock, tabloid type stories- pick a different publication, Tatler is a posh, fashion and party magazine with articles about spas and restaurants, if you wanted a journalist who was some sort of tabloid scum it would've been legitimate to have him write for The Sun, The Daily Star, OK Magazine, Take a Break even, a one minute google search would have provided this information.

All this being said it was interesting to read about places I've seen in the last few weeks. I was a bit surprised at just how many of the places mentioned in the book I'd already been to, I thought it might make me curious to find new places but I knew everywhere that was mentioned.

This is a lot more of a rant than I ever normally write but this book made me a bit ranty

more Roma/ Cairo

I've been thinking some more about this, maybe its this arch shape that has struck a chord?

Taken around the citadel, I forget exactly where, maybe the Alabaster Mosque?

so its not exactly the same but this arch is the most recognisable feature of Rome's most recognisable feature

maybe this is what links these cities in my head?