Pisa!

For our October break this year we flew to Pisa and stayed at a hotel in the city for 3 nights.

Just down the road from our hotel is a church, Chiesa di San Michele Degli Scalzi, with a leaning tower, no, not the leaning tower but this one certainly does lean!

Galileo was born in this house in 1564.

The Palazzo dei Cavalieri has some very impressive buildings bordering a very large square with a Medici statue in front of the palace above...

...and was the political centre in medieval Pisa.

A short distance away, amid throngs of tourists, is the world famous Leaning Tower, the 14th century bell tower built alongside the Cattedrale di Pisa.

A view of the cathedral from the top of the tower...

...and a photo of us with one of the actual bells.

And here you have the Baptistry, the Cathedral and the bell tower.

The Fiume Arno runs through the city on it's way to the sea and provides some lovely views with many bridges.

Keith Haring was an American artist and social activist who has produced murals all over the world. This is one of his works on the back of a building in Pisa, with us standing at the bottom of it, called "Tuttomundo" which he painted in 1989 a few months before he died aged 31.

For lunch we had a piece of pizza in Pisa!

Followed by an ice cream. 

You can see my short video of our experience in Pisa HERE.

You can see some of the photos which we put on Facebook HERE

and the remainder of the Pisa photos HERE.

Next, to Florence.

The Full Lunar Eclipse

It's not often we get a full lunar eclipse so even though it wasn't until 3 a.m. it was worth making the effort for.

At that time in the morning the sky was fairly clear...

...so armed with my camera and video camera, both on tripods,...

...I ventured outside onto our bedroom terrace.

An eclipse, which can take a couple of hours in this instance,...

...is not the most stimulating spectacle...

...but fortified by several cups of tea, I survived the ordeal.

Just in the last few minutes when everything was getting very dark...

...a light dusting of cloud came across and I was unable to see the eclipse in all it's glory showing the "blood moon". That's the way it is - better luck next time.

To see the video, edited to 3½ minutes, click HERE.

Our bonsaied olive trees

We had 3 olive trees "trimmed" in the spring and I have been training them all summer.

They are now looking, more or less, the way I wanted them...

...which is for them to be more contained...

...rather than spindly and all over the place as olive trees tend to grow.

They are certainly different here in the village of Torre del Compte...

...where you are never going to see any others like them as they will never produce olives!

Rebuilding Torre del Compte

Since the hailstorm almost 2 weeks ago the village of Torre del Compte has become a building site with every house roof having work done on it either now or at some time in the future.

To see the short video I have put together from my drone, click HERE.

After the devastation

In this short video, which I took from my drone, we see what is going on with the buildings in the village of Torre del Compte 1 week after the horrendous hail storm.

Click HERE to see the video.

San Ramón

The ultimate day of the fiesta is the day of San Ramón which is celebrated on 31 August.

This year the midday service was held in the ermita as the church was still undergoing renovation work.

Everyone was dressed in their best...

...for the mass...

...and several people were wearing the traditional costume or traje regional.

Lunch for the entire village took place in the Plaza Mayor...

...and everyone was served a plate of paella...

...followed by our homemade deserts.



Everyone enjoyed the meal and the company, a wonderful end to the fiesta celebrations.

But then, shortly after everyone had dispersed, a hailstorm, like no other you have ever seen with hailstones almost as big as tennis balls...

...lasted just over 10 minutes and destroyed virtually everything in it's path...

...especially if it was made from plastic like the swing settee,..

...our garden relaxer seats,...

...my YingYang mobile, shattered!, as well as the solar heater for the jacuzzi...

...and 2 out of 3 of the wall light globes.

There will be a very poor crop of olives to harvest this year as so many were torn from the trees by the hailstones.

Similarly, the current crop of peaches has been decimated and all the damaged fruit has been discarded. The almond harvest too will be reduced. This has a knock on effect not only for the farmers who have lost their crops but also for the casual labour employed to collect and sort the produce. The only people to benefit from the storm are the roofing contractors and the car repair centres.

The force of the hailstones had also broken many of the tiles on the terrace as well as chopping up the hosepipe between the jacuzzi and the solar heating panel.

Although our car was parked under an overhang to give it more shade from the sun it was still exposed to the storm and suffered a lot of damage to the windscreen, every plastic part and the body panels.

The last time the village of Torre del Compte witnessed so much destruction was over 75 years ago during the Spanish civil war.

At least when a bomb explodes it is over within a couple of seconds. Here, the bombardment was constant for over 10 minutes.

Someone, or something, had obviously offended San Ramón for him to have sent the storm to punish the village. Maybe he was upset because his statue was not taken around the village as it is every year when the service is held in the church but because this year, as the mass was in the ermita, he was not carried around the village.

To see the video of the TV and local coverage of the storm, click HERE

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