Tuscany #2

As promised I'd like to write you few more comments on Tuscany. I've to say it again: this region is really wonderful, but probably best time to visit is May or October. Unfortunately as you know I visited it in August. And I've seen mostly cities, so more on them below.

Firenze - here you've to see at least two things - river with famous bridge Ponte Vecchio and Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Both are wonderful, but probably only in the morning when there's no people there. Besides it's really hard to take a good picture of Cathedral, because even with very wide lens you can't step back, because of other buildings :( - so probably the best pictures I've seen were taken from the hill on the other river bank. Unfortunately I had no time for such picture and was trying my best with wide angle, but please rate it yourself...

1. The Bridge

2. The CathedralSiena - in my personal opinion this is the best city of Tuscany. I had luck and was there on 16th of August when there's Palio event (it's also organized on 2nd July). But because of my luck it was a lack of parking spaces. Fortunately we found very nice parking next to the train station - it's in 20 minutes walking distance to the city center and is rather cheap - I've paid only 2 EUR for 5 or 6 hours - very rare rate in Italy. After leaving the car we headed to the city and then we found out that there's Palio day! Very crowded city center, but also a lot of colorful parades. Just see few pictures...

1. Palio on Piazza del Campo
2. Around the Cathedral in Siena
3. The Cathedral of Siena (Duomo)

Montecatini Terme - we were staying in our villa near this city and discovered it only the last day of our stay. It turned out to be a nice place with wonderful spa park and old hotels. Very atmospheric place with a lot of green squares. I definitely recommend visiting this place just on your way somewhere else. Below:

1. My favourite picture from the whole trip to Italy:
2. Telephone
3. Guess what?Pisa - small, simple city with very famous tower. Yes, I can confirm it's really leaning! The tower was closed in 1990 because it was in danger of falling over, but after spending millions on construction works (as far as I know designed by polish engineer), it was finally opened once again and tourists can enter the 800-year-old tower again (but only if they're older than six and very patient and want to pay a lot of money). In August one had to wait at least 3 hours to get the ticket. Of course it's nothing bad - you can spend that time in one of nice restaurants around, but as I heard it's worth going up anyway. I wasn't up there, so can show you some pictures from below :(

1. The tower and vicinity