Italy: Pisa

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته and good day!

I just realised I've had this in draft for so long. hahaha... Sorry peeps. Here you go.

After all the hustle and sight-seeings in Florence, we were off to Pisa. 

Taking the train in Italy is slightly different than in UK. The tickets is quite big, and you need to validate the tickets on a machine at the platform before you board or you'll be fined. Being noob as we are, we didn't know until the announcer told us, which was literally a minute before the train departs. We asked other passenger, and when we found out we needed to get off the train, I volunteered to run. Luckily, I saw an attendant on board and went to him instead. He told me to get back on the train and validated the tickets for us. Phew~~~

The train ride to Pisa was smooth as a sailor. We stopped at Pisa Centrale. From there, we needed to take a bus to go to the leaning tower. I don't remember which bus though, you need to google it.

It didn't take long to go to the leaning tower from the train station. Roughly around 10 minutes. We placed our bags at a luggage hold at the station. The rate was quite expensive for me. maybe because compared to Rome and Amsterdam, Italy is quite pricey. They charge per luggage, and there's no holding for short period of time. Only 12 and 24 hours are available. 

When we arrive at the leaning tower, there weren't many people there since it was still very early in the morning. 

There's three things located together with the leaning tower. The first one is this, the baptistery. 

Then the cathedral.

and last..the main attraction...the leaning tower.

We bought tickets to go up the tower in advance (when we were in Florence). The tickets costs €23.66...I think..haha...most of the info from this trip I've forgotten already. =P

Anywho...we went to the ticket counter to validate the tickets we bought, there's a locker service here (if we knew, we would've brought along our luggage. It's free too! You need to put all your belongings in the locker. You're only allowed a camera, a phone, or any other hand held devices. There's a security check at the entrance of the tower. They will even wand you. 

The tower consists of 300 steps!! 

The tower itself is made out of sparkling white marble and stone. Even the steps. So you can see the indented part where people has been stepping on it for more than 200 years!!

Yo can feel the tower lean as you go up. 

Not even close to the top yet

Running out of breath

Finally made it!!!

I don't know what is it with Italy and climbing buildings. haha...It seems that is all we've been doing since we've got here.

The leaning tower is also called as the bell tower for the cathedral. Hence, the many bells on top.

The bell will rang every hour. It rang when we were up there, luckily I wasn't really that close to it. But it still made me jump. 

After we went down, we wanted to take some iconic shots with the tower before the area gets crowded.

My bestie couldn't get a good picture of me. This was the 100th time we tried, hence the facial expression.

After that, we wanted to go inside the cathedral, but hasn't been opened yet.

So we decided to go to the building next to it.

This building is actually a cemetery. Don't believe me? See it for yourself. 

It's called Camposanto which means holy field. It also refers to as monumental cemetery. These are actual graves of actual people. Since a very long time ago. They even have a display of coffins that were used in the old days. Maybe the body inside already decayed and nothing was left. But still...ugh..

There's even new arrivals being buried here. This one was recently added on 2009. The only grave with flowers on them. Must be someone important. 

The middle was an open plan with an empty grass area. 

After feeling gloomy from all the dead people, we went to the baptistery. This is the largest baptistry in Italy.

 

While we were busy taking pictures, suddenly the guard kept shooshing the touring group of kids and other people who were making noises inside the baptistery. At first I thought it was just to remind them that this is a place of worship and certain conduct needs to be addressed. 

 Suddenly we heard this sound (from the video). It turned out, they have a calling for prayer too. We didn't know at first, but we asked the guard afterwards and he told us (with the limited english that we understood from him) that the call was to tell people of midday and for prayer.

 

However, I didn't find more information about this in the net. Maybe any christian orthodox that read this can tell us more.

 

And now to the cathedral.

 

This is the prayer hall inside the cathedral. The rope is to close that part from visitors and only be open during mass.  While we were in there, there's this one tour group that's always near us, so we get the chance to have some additional info. 

The guide said this cathedral have a lot of Ottoman empire influence in its architectural design. See the pillars? You can see the same design in Mezquita in Cordoba too (I haven't written a post about it yet...huhu).

 

Well, while we're here, might as well take more pictures with the leaning tower. Who cares how ridiculous you'll look. 

 

Join in the fun like these people. hahahaha...it's fun just watching them.

 

 The last part that we went to is the museum. Let me just tell you upfront, it's boring. LOL

 

We watched the 3D virtual tour of the museums and buildings here.

 

Most of them are ruins of paintings and sculptures that they find.

 

More pictures of the leaning tower before we left.

 

The Tuscany alley. Couldn't get enough of it.

 

After Pisa, we were off to Rome, our last destination of the trip. We already bought the bus tickets earlier on. However, the bus that we need to take is not that near to the attractions. It's a 15 minutes bus ride. 

 

The place where we need to wait for our bus is a parking lot and used to be a resting stop with a lot of stores. However, they are no longer in business, kind of like an abandoned cowboy town. Then there's this shuttle train-bus to take tourists that parked their car here to the Leaning Tower. We waited for 2 hours for our bus because we arrived too early.

 

The bus that we rode is called flexibus. It is the most comfy bus I've ridden in all of europe. The price is affordable too!!

 

The bus was almost empty, so we can do what we want. hahaha...We ended up sleeping the whole way.

Until next time...in Rome. =D

Italy: Florence Part 4

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته and good day!

Continued from part 3.It's been a while since I last updated this blog about the Italy trip. I've been swamped to my neck with labwork. Well, what can you do? That's the life of a PhD candidate.

This'll be the last part for Florence. So for our last day in Florence, we decided to go to the furthest part which are near the river. This time, because our accommodation has changed and we already need to take a bus to go to the city, it'll be easier for us to go straight to the Piazza de Santa Croce directly from our accommodation.

Near our accommodation, there's a big supermarket where we bought some food and drinks before moving on to our journey. 

We only need to take one bus to go to Santa Croce. One bus ticket costs €1.20 if you buy from a shop and not the bus driver. we bought a 4 journey ticket which costs us €4.20 each which is a huge save. 

Everytime you take the bus, you need to validate your ticket on the bus, at a machine usually located near the driver or the middle of the bus. If not, you'll risk having to pay a fine of €40 or more. So it's better to always validate your ticket. Sometimes when it was peak hour and the bus is all packed, we didn't get a chance to validate, so we saved some journey where we can use the same ticket. But that was lucky and depending on situation. So rather than taking that risk, it's better to always validate your tickets.

Moving on, from the bus stop, we need to walk a bit to go to the Santa Croce. We saw this gorgeous terrace with the purple flower outside. Made me feel I'm in the movie called 'Under the Tuscan Sun'. Florence is part of Tuscany after all. 

Even their recycling bins are so unique.

Tadaa....the view from Santa Croce. The Santa Croce is the huge cathedral that we saw from on top of Duomo before. 

The Santa Croce..

We didn't went inside because we had enough of cathedrals and churches already. 

My bestie's labmate who is from Florence told us to go to Uffizi.

So off we go..

This street is called Gepetto, so naturally, there'll be Pinocchio here..haha..

To those who didn't watch Disney movies, Gepetto is Pinocchio's father (the carpenter that made him).

Uffizi is a museum, or you might call it as a gallery. It's a brown building, kind of looked like a castle. Not as interesting as the plaza in front of it.

The plaza itself is quite famous, where there's a lot of statues made by famous artist including Michelangelo. I didn't take any pictures because, well...they are all naked. 

This is inside of the gallery...more stairs...To go here, you can either buy a ticket at the booth or online. I would advice you to buy them online because the line is quite long. Not for buying the tickets but for entering. Even if you've bought them online, you still need to go to the ticket counter for them to give you the actual ticket (which i don't see the point of this), but it'll take less time. 

Let me just say this up front, this gallery is very famous, but frankly, I wasn't interested. maybe because most of the displays are more to Christian history (more like stories because they're not true). Paintings, sculptures from artists interpreting the bible from their own point of view.

The only thing that made me interested was these two displays. See the pictures?

These are the portraits of rulers during the Ottoman Empire. There's Sultan Mahmud I and II, Sultan Muhammad III and many more. Part of Italy was once ruled by the Ottoman Empire after they defeated the Byzantine. 

We were more excited about the view outside because it is located next to the river.

After Uffizi, we went to the riverside to cross it through the Ponte Vecchio (Vecchio bridge). It was built during the Roman Empire, but after it was destroyed by flood, they rebuild it again. 

The bridge host many shops since the day it was built (like the old London bridge before it collapsed). Before, there were carpenters and butchers' shop, nowadays, there's jewellers, art dealers and souvenir shops instead. 

Locals say, the bridge will light up at night due to the shiny and dazzle from the gold that were sold here. I'll show you later in this post.

Next to it is Ponte Santa Trinita.

After a long walk, we went for a gelato hunt. my bestie's labmate suggested this place which was said to be the best gelato in Italy!

See the line? 

There were so many choices of flavours. the price was reasonable too! and the taste...oh..my..GOD!!!

After the glorious refreshment, we prayed at a nearby park, and off to the next destination.

On the way to Forte de Belvedere is the Palazzo Pitti. Of course we didn't enter because we were running out of time.

The place was on top of a hill

We pushed through eventhough we felt like fainting.

We looked at the time, and we decided to cancel going to the fort and went to Piazzale Michelangelo instead. You'll see why we were in such a hurry.

Going to Piazzale Michelangelo was an uphill journey too. This time, it's even steeper than before.

When we finally reached the top..viola!!!

We sat at the huge steps where you can see the whole of Florence.

There's many people here, but everyone behaved so well. No one were pushing or blocking other people from enjoying the view. 

The best part was the entertainment. huhu...The atmosphere was so great for a sunset view.

Now lets look at the bridge...Can you see the glow? Those are the glow from the gold shops!

This picture gives a better view. Cool right?!

Normal light will not give such a strong hue. 

Back to the sunset. 

Such a gorgeous view..totally worth the climb.

We sat here until it was dark to bask in the view

Chubbiness still remains

This is the main attraction here. It's a statue of David. Then again, he's naked. I had to take a picture from his sides in order not to see his weenie. blurghh...

So that's it from Florence. I'll continue for Pisa after this. 

Until next time...

Italy: Florence Part 3

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته and good day!

Continued from Part 2

After we stretched our legs going up the dome and the bell tower, (total steps taken was 877!! pffttt) we went to the synagogue since we missed it on the first day.

 

You can see the synagogue from afar.

I've always wanted to see the inside of a synagogue since I've never been into one. I've been to a lot of cathedrals, churches, basilica, but never a synagogue. I almost got the opportunity to go when I was in Cordoba (I haven't written a post about it yet...huhu..), but it was closed then too. 

*We weren't allowed to take any cameras or phones inside the synagogue, so these pictures are from google.

 

To enter the synagogue, you have to pay for the tickets which costs €16 each. It was a bit expensive if you ask me. You'll see in a minute. When we arrive, it was already almost 4pm, so there weren't a lot of people here. Plus, this place close at 5pm.

At the entrance, there's the ticket booth, lockers where you need to put all your bags in (nothing is allowed in, including cameras, phones, food and drink) and a glass door, kind of look like a revolving door, but smaller. So after you've secured your bags and belongings in the locker, you need to push the green button to open the glass door, you enter the 'chamber'. it'll scan you, then the other glass door will open. Sort of like if you didn't pass the metal gates at the airport where you need to be scanned extra inside the x-ray chamber (probably like this at certain airports only). 

The security was super tight here. There's even an army, fully loaded and armed standing outside the gates and the entrance for people that wanted to go for prayer. 

As we enter, the courtyard was very quiet. There was a small garden in front. So we went inside, at the door, there's a basket of kippah for the men to wear. This is what a kippah is to those who don't know. I have an officemate who wear this everyday. 

Photo by google.

We decided to go to the museums upstairs first to see what's there before entering the prayer hall. The museum comprises of two floors.

It's a good thing there's a lift here. We had enough of stairs for one day.

We went to the top floor first, there's a whole lot of things about jewish history, and history about the italian jew.

I guess we were pretty tired from all the climbing, so we just walked past the displays and didn't really read much. There's a few Torahs on display as well.

In the synagogue, prayer halls are separated between male and female. Female prayer hall is located on the first floor while men prayer hall is at the main hall, located at the ground floor. Almost like mosques and musollas where male and female have separate rooms for prayer. 

We suddenly realised that the prayer hall will be closed earlier than the museum, so we decided to skip the first floor after seeing the female prayer hall and went down to the ground floor to see the main prayer hall.

The arrangement is almost similar to a church, except instead of facing forward, their main focus in at the centre where the podium will be placed and where the priest (or known as Rabbi in Hebrew) will stand and give his sermon and readings from the Torah. It forms sort of like a circular shape, if in Islam, we call it as halaqah. 

We sat on the chair for a bit to rest our legs. The chairs have a small pull out table, most probably for them to put their book of prayers and stuff. 

There's also a souvenir shop located beside the prayer hall, and that was it.

I told you there's nothing much, and I think the amount to pay for the entrance is way to much for this. 

We went back to our accommodation after that. 

Until next time....