Collodi and Pisa

13/6/2011

Today we went to Collodi the birth place of the story of Pinocchio.
Carlo Collodi, the author of the story of Pinocchio, was the pen name of Carlo Lorenzini, who was born and grew up in Florence. The last part of his pen name was the name of the Tuscan village where Lorenzini’s mother was born: Collodi.
You can see the photo of Sheree standing outside ‘Parco di Pinocchio a Collodi’, the Pinocchio Park of Collodi. It’s a rather old fashioned kind of park from the days when you didn’t need bloodcurdling death-defying rides to charm the kids. The park tells Collodi’s version of the story of Pinocchio through sculpture, mosaics and puppet shows. It features a museum with Pinocchio related items. There was a bewildering amount of Pinocchio souvenirs here. (see pic). Other than the park there was not much else here so we decided to go and visit the Pieve di Santa Maria with a church that dated back to 1086. Perched way up in the hills above Collodie it had some great views and was not very touristy so saw more of the locals just doing what locals do.

We were planning on visiting Pisa the next day but as we had time, decided to go today. Finding parking in Pisa was the next trick. Being a very popular tourist stop it was very busy. We found some parks but standing close buy were groups of colored people offering to watch your car if you bought some of their trinkets. This made us feel a little uncomfortable so ignored them as much as possible, bought a parking ticket from the machine and hesitantly went to the tower. There was a police man at the entrance to the tower so Steven asked him if the car was safe and he assured us it was (no proplemo).
The leaning tower, really is leaning a lot and we took some of the standard tourist pics. Even the church beside it looks like it is leaning over as well. There are heaps of little market type stalls as you walk up to it so we bought a little tower and a tea towel as a keep sake.
Walked back to the car and our friends were there again so we made a hasty departure to avoid them.
Back in Lucca and as it was such a lovely evening we went for a stroll around the town and stopped for tea at a lovely restaurant, that was popular with the locals and sat out side in the plaza. It was just lovely sitting here, as when other dinners saw people they knew who walk past or rode past on their bikes, they were greeted with a friendly and exuberant Italian greeting. Some would stop and come over for a chat or even have a drink. It was all very Italian and we loved it. It was quite late and with more than a little wine under our belts that we slowly wondered home….wonderful