Trip to the South - From the UK to Puglia (Part II)
Our journey brings an early start as we want to crunch some miles before lunch. We travel without incident towards Genoa, which provides a breath-taking scene as you drop down into the outskirts of the city from the mountains. We continue on with a very pleasant section of the journey as we join the coast road for the leg of the journey to Pisa. My advice to anyone who is planning this trip is to stay on this coast road all the way to Rome as it is far more pleasant (and there are no tolls and just as fast). A warm breeze, the sun on your back, the sea to your right – Ahhh! the joys of motorcycling. Then a little voice ‘Oi! Barry Sheene. I’ll look at the scenery, you keep your eyes on the road’. What a great idea this £10 E-Bay intercom was.
Before we know it we are in Pisa on a Festa day and there is no traffic as we head towards the Leaning Tower, which you can see from everywhere on the outskirts. Pisa proves to be a delight and somewhere I would definitely return to, despite the fact that it bows to the tourist trade. The sections along the river Arno are beautiful, but nothing prepares you for the Piazza del Duomo. Pisa is more than just a freak of architecture, the cathedral and baptistery that form a magnificent trinity with the tower – it is a place where you could easily spend an entire afternoon
After an evening of photo sessions around the old town and a meal at a small pizzeria we have an early night. We’re hoping for the chance of getting ‘Carrie’ (the name given to the 1998 plate 800cc V-twin Suzuki Marauder cruiser bike by my wife who thinks it’s possessed) into the Piazza del Duomo for an early morning photo shoot.
The early call was well worth it, a glorious sunrise provides beautiful, mellow ever-changing light on the totally deserted piazza, making marvellous pictures, with Carrie taking a well deserved centre-stage for a couple of shots before we zoom off back to our hotel for breakfast.
Day Five
We head towards Firenze and then all roads lead to Roma… except ours as we will be skirting the eternal city in the stretch of our journey which proves to be the biggest grind, a seemingly never-ending motorway as nondescript towns slip by (yes, we should have taken the coast road).
