Day 1: Pisa

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.