Piece of Pizza in Pisa

I've been out of touch with the internet since coming to Italy, or at least with that part of it which allows me to post blogs. Happily all that is now resolved, so I'm going to put up stuff I wrote and stored, starting with a week ago. Don't worry, we'll soon be up-to-date.

12 July 2009 :
My birthday, far far far away from Orangefest. I’m sitting in a railway station in Pisa waiting for a train to Lucca. So far, in a series of announcements every five minutes, the train is declared fifty-five minutes late (retardo). On the plus side, the sun is California/|Vancouver hot, with a nice little breeze drifting up the platform.

Last night we arrived near midnight at the hotel in Pisa. The bus dropped us just outside it and after asking Luigi at the desk, we were directed down the street to a very humble pizzeria. The family were finished for the day and settling to eat their own meal; but the woman of the house hustled around and heated up two chunks of left-over pizza in what looked like but may not have been an ancient oven. On the wall behind her, a mirror advertising Campari or was it Cinzano showed a naked woman with bottles as a short skirt, her head hidden, and the lower half of her breast revealed. The mirror bore the adage ‘Welcome to Paradise’. On the adjoining wall there was a picture of Jesus, very gentle and meek and mild.Sex and religion, in happy conjunction. We took the pizza bits in tinfoil and wolfed it down before falling asleep. The hotel was nice. The pizza was delicious.