Le tour d'Italie: Pisa

Vacation, what a lovely word! Here in France the month of May is somewhat of a short month. There are holidays in which most French people make 'le Pont', which means the bridge. This usually consists of -Thursday (the holiday) and Friday (the day which they took off so that they can have a long weekend)- bridging the gap between Thursday and Friday; therefore 'le pont'... whew.. I hope I didn't complicate the idea with my explaination! During this time some french people decide to work on their homes, relax, or have a small weekend getaway to the closest region or country. We chose the latter.


Surfing the Internet and pinterest we had run into beautiful pictures of Italy which motivated us to move it to the top of the list of places to see. Most specifically, Cinque Terre, Italy. (Which I will talk more about in another post) We had 4 days to explore the area and realized that even though Cinque Terre was the main event we also wanted to take advantage of the other well known cities in the western part of the country. Here comes in Pisa, only 101 km and about an 1h 20m from the main destination we said; what the heck, why not!?


Fortunately, We don't live too far away from Italy we decide to make it a roadtrip! We packed up The car and drove 5.5 hours from Aix en Provence, France to Pisa making it our first stop on this four day cross countries road trip. We decided on Pisa as our first stop since it was the furthest destination we planned on from France. We wanted to start with the furthest and work our way back so that it's not too overwhelming for us in Sunday.


Going into Pisa I was a bit disappointed. Being that I had already been to Rome and Florence(my absolute favorite!) a few years ago, I was expecting to be swept away by a romantic city, but instead I was welcomed by a city with not much to see except the tour of Pisa and its cathedral. I'm usually the kind of wanderer that likes to explore the city and see multiple sights... ya know the active wanderer who wakes up at 8am and wants to be out by 9am because they don't want to miss a thing! Yea.... that's me as annoying as it may seem.


Even though we weren't amazed by Pisa I defintely recommend visiting this city for a few hours if you're on roadtrip mode or as a stop on your way to cinque Terre or Florence.


We can't complain too much, we enjoyed visiting the tower of Pisa, we even gave into doing the touristy things.... you know what I mean ;)

The River Arno

The plaza in the center of Pisa

A really pleasant walk in the park

The entrance to the park

Romantic balcony, we saw many local couples spending quality time here

The Cathedral next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa

The cathedral next to the Leaning tower of Pisa

The intricate details on this door is breath taking; the entrance to the cathedral

A nice view of how much the Tower of Pisa is actually leaning

Oh yes being a typical tourist, do you catch anything funny in this picture?

What can I say.... when in Pisa do as the tourists do :)

the tower is really breath taking! I'm glad I got the opportunity to see it in person

I hope you enjoyed the pictures! See you in our next adventure!

Bisous,

R

Magical Garden

Throughout the whole summer we've been noticing flyers around town for this 'open air movie theatre' We thought that sounded pretty cool; watching a movie in the crisp summer night under the glistening stars. Well it wasn't until this past tuesday that we had the time and motivation to go try it out. We called to make reservations since its encouraged just in case all of citizens of this huge city called Pertuis decide to invade this place all at once. I'm obviously being sarcastic.

Anyways we made our reservations, the person we spoke to urged us to come early since twe have the opportunity to walk around the chateau and the gardens... did I mention, this place is a chateau, vineyard, and it has a private garden. We thought to ourself well that kinda justifies the 12 euro price along with the complimentary glass of rosé. So as suggested we ate an early dinner and heade out to check out this mystery chateau... I honestly couldn't picture a chateau out here but appparently Pertuis has more to offer than i had imagined.
We made our way down to the chateau which is kinda hidden but relatively close to the center ville, its about a 5 min car ride.
So we get there and see all these people hanging out having drinks walking around apparently this was the place to be tuesday night and we just found out about! We decided to hold off on the glass of wine until the movie started and boy were we glad for that.The movie (we really didn't have a choice in the matter) wasn't our cup of tea.

So we decided to take a stroll and check out the garden, and we weren't disappointed! It's so beautiful, well maintained, and magical! Not to mention you get to experience provence wine country at its best with acres and acres of vineyards. Unfortunately I forgot my heavy duty camera at home but like always my trusty Iphone was there to save the day :).We walked around and saw every corner of the garden for about an hour and then laid the blanket down on the grass to enjoy the transition into evening and people watch... one of mmy favorite pass times. Like I said there were a lot of people there especially couples and young families many of which brought a nice picnic bag with all of the essentials. Kids were playing in the garden and parents were boozin it up. hey, I can't blame them!

We started watching the movie around 9:30pm and it still wasn't over at 11:40pm so we decided to ditch it and just go home... I was really bummed out that I didnt have my camera to take pictures so I decided to stop by the next day and take pictures. Well that didn't work the next day the weather was really bad. We had thunderstorms and hail, kinda scary actually. So instead I went on thursday and I couldn't ask for a better day! The weather was perfect and there was on a fraction of the people that were there on tuesday night. This place is actually really cool I said that this would be a great place to have a wedding and apparently they thought of the idea before I did. Events such as weddings and parties happen here all summer. Maybe that could appeal to someone looking to have a destination wedding in the South of France and honestly which place could be the better option than Provence. We are about 20 minutes from the center ville of Aix en Provence and 40 minutes from the 2nd largest city in France; Marseille. Not to mention this year (2013) it is the European capital city of culture.
The name os the chateau is Val-Joanis it's located in Pertuis, France. You can check them out HERE

Well lets get to the pictures why don't we!