It's half term and I needed to come up with an activity to do with my nephew. He's already had a trip to London, which he thoroughly enjoyed, and so I thought about doing more of the same. And from this premise somehow developed the idea of taking him to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. His father's tagged along, and this is the story of Alfie's, Matt's and my first day of our little break.

It started early, since we had to leave the house at 04:00 in order to get to the airport in time. There was a potentially hairy moment when the A14 was closed and we were sent on a lengthy diversion, but since we had no luggage to check in we still arrived with plenty of time to eat some gristle (Alfie leaving most of his, although his happened by far to be item most resembling food) and board the plane easily.

Our plan was to see the sights of Pisa, get something to eat, and then head to our apartment in Lucca, and so we set straight off. Before too long we found a statue of Italy's first king, Vittorio Emmanuele II:

From there we headed up the main street, Corso d'Italia, which had some beautiful buildings along it:

That led us to the bridge across the River Arno. We could see some beautifully coloured buildings along the other side:

We walked past Piazza Garibaldi:

Then we turned a corner and found a fabulous square called Piazza dei Cavalieri:

That was amazing but better was to come, when we walked away, turned a corner and out of nowhere saw the thing that we had come to see appearing out of nowhere:

The Leaning Tower is beautiful and extremely famous, but what a lot of people don't know is that it's one of several exceptional buildings on the Campo dei Miracoli:

We had to make sure to get a special souvenir of photo in front of the Leaning Tower:

We spent a lot of time walking around in the boiling heat before finding something to eat (which cost a fortune, not least because on top of a charge to sit down, a 15% service charge had been imposed). And once that was done we caught the train to Lucca, settled in, and began a forlorn adventure to find some food. After an hour's pacing in the diminishing light we eventually came across a supermarket which said it was open until 20:00 but, alas, it was closed at 19:30. Typical. We resorted to using a vending machine at the train station because there was absolutely nothing open. But at least we now know that there is a supermarket around the corner for tomorrow's breakfast. But at this point it's been a long day (Alfie's now been awake for 18 hours) and so it's time to sign off, get some sleep, and then enjoy tomorrow's touring of Lucca and trip to the seaside.

Yesterday was an extremely long day. The only one who got through it without nodding off was Alfie (Matt and I both fell asleep for a counterproductive five minutes on the train from Pisa to Lucca) and, even though we all went to bed at the same time, it was the seven-year-old who was first out of bed and eager to start our first morning in Italy. We made a quick visit to the shop we had visited the previous evening to get the food for our breakfast, and then we decided to visit Lucca inside its city walls.

We had to enter the city from below and climb up to the ramparts. There are lions guarding the entry points:

From the ramparts you can see the mountains in the distance. They stretch around every side of Lucca:

The ramparts themselves are very green:

When we headed in we soon found the cathedral:

The streets were very narrow and flanked by beautifully coloured buildings. What really caught our eyes was the Guinigi Tower appearing in the sky, with its rooftop trees catching us totally by surprise:

We reached our target soon afterwards, the Roman Ampitheatre. Although it looked quite pretty with its modern look, I think we might have preferred seeing the original version:

It was a really hot day, so we decided to spend some time having a few drinks in one of the pretty sidestreets before heading back to the train station to travel to Viareggio:

The train journey to Viareggio was entirely uneventful and over before we knew it. It was then a simple matterof moving in the one direction that didn't have mountains to find the beach. We were lucky that even though the day was hot, as far as the locals were concerned summer was over and we had it to ourselves, near enough. Matt and Alfie headed straight to the sea to dip their toes into the Mediterranean:

Alfie was quite happy to entertain himself on the beach:

And whilst Alfie worked off his excess energy running around the beach, Matt and I enjoyed a nice sea-view whilst giving the local barlady some custom in the off-season:

We headed home and settled down for the night knowing we'd be leaving our apartment in the morning and heading to Florence.

I woke up today to the sound of rain hammering. Much of Europe was on the receiving end of a hurricane, and Italy was no exception. I was equipped only for sunny weather and my first thought was that I was going to get soaked when I went out to buy breakfast. I did indeed.

As luck would have it, the rain abated not long afterwards and we were able to head to the train station on foot, sparing us the rip-off taxi fare of 9€ that one rob-dog had charged us for the five-minute drive on our first night. We were off to Florence.

Clare and I had been twice before and so I knew what to expect. I also knew that Florence is so replete with sights that we had to make a second visit previously to fit everything in. That's not good for a seven-year-old and so I made a conscious decision just to get the best things in.

That meant turning a corner and seeing the Duomo spring out of nowhere:

It really is a collosal structure, and it's easy to see why it's the jewel in Florence's crown:

The facade is really elaborate:

And so is the detail in the statures which adorn it:

We saw lots of statues and other lovely buildings whilst walking around, but nothing so eminent as what beheld us at Piazza Santa Croce. There was the statue of Dante as a warm-up:

But that was only minor compared to the basilica which it was beside:

The square was full of statues, including this one of one of the Medici:

And many others:

Standing in the middle was this one after carrying out a decapitation!

The inside of the basilica is beautiful:

And there were even some lions for Alfie to pose in front of:

We went off to try some ice cream because the sun was bearing down on us and then headed back to the apartment. On the way we passed a street flanked by twenty or thirty statues of luminaries. I didn't necessarily recognise any of them until I caught a glimpse of my humanist hero at the very end:

It was fitting, really. We'd started the holiday in town of his birth and we were going to finish it in the town of the world's first university. But first there was the small matter of a boys' night in watching Star Wars and eating pizza.

And so we started the final day of our mini-break. We took a stroll through Florence from our apartment to the train station, and headed off to Bologna. We weren't going to have much time there because we also needed to head to the airport, but we resolved to at least spend a couple of hours there.

We deliberately decided to enter the city through its main gate, as though the medieval walls were still in place:

Alfie very quickly spotted a very ornate staircase and resolved to climb it:

It was very elaborately decorated:

Getting to the top afforded us a nice view of the gate that we'd just walked through:

We didn't have time to investigate the park behind it so descended and walked down the main street, soon discovering a statue of Garibaldi:

We were hungry having only had some fruit for breakfast, so we knew what to do - look for somewhere selling spaghetti bolognese!

From there it was a short walk to the main square:

And then we travelled to the airport and headed home. We had a very tired seven-year-old on our hands but he didn't sleep at all until we were in the car heading back to his house. He'd a had a lovely time and his dad and I had too. And all this because it was cheaper to fly to and from Italy than travel by train in the UK! I think we'll have to do it again ...