Is anyone else afraid of pigeons? I don't know why but they just seem dirty to me. I'm sure they have bird lice or something equally itchy. Or maybe it has something to do with me watching the film The Birds at a very young and impressionable age. Whatever the reason, I don't like pigeons.

St Mark's square in Venice is crawling with pigeons. You can pay a man for some seed to feed to the birds. While we were in Venice we saw lots of people doing just that. Feeding seed to the birds. The prospect of free food made the pigeons awfully excited. They'd fly up around the person with the seed and land on their arms or on the person's head. Like the people in the photo below. They are engulfed by pigeons.

Ugh! I can't imagine paying for that privilege. While we were there I even made Andrew walk in front of me to clear a pathway through the pigeons. I'm sure there would have been girly screams and shrieks if a pigeon landed on me. My skin is crawling now just thinking of it. *shudder*.

In Venice, the pigeons in St Mark's square are a tourist attraction. In Trafalgar Square in London a concerted effort was made to rid the square of pigeons. (Not kill them, just make them go somewhere else.) There are "Don't feed the pigeons" signs everywhere. At 11am everyday a trained falcon circles Nelson's column and the square to scare away any persistent pigeons. (Is this a scent or sight thing I wonder?) I think Trafalgar Square is a much nicer place without the pigeons.

Andrew and I travelled to Venice in March 2007 to celebrate our 2nd Wedding Anniversary. More photos (slideshow) from the trip can be seen on Flickr.

There is always a church post, isn't there?

Florence's main ABC is the Duomo. In Italian, Duomo translates to cathedral. I always thought it came from Dome. But no, duomo comes from the Latin "domus" meaning house. In this case, the house of God.

Florence's Duomo is Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. It's made of pink, green and white marble and the decorations on the facade are very elaborate. It looks like a giant wedding cake. Its "world's largest" is its dome. It's made of red brick and is the largest brick dome ever constructed. When the Duomo was built, it was the largest church in the Italy. Until the Pope got cranky and decided that the largest church should be in Rome and not in Florence. Ok, enough about the stats.

Because we're a bit meh about churches now, we usually visit them for one thing. To climb them. Andrew and Jess, conquering the churches of the world. At the Duomo in Florence, you can climb the bell tower or the dome. We choose to climb the Dome.

The climb itself is quite fun. It's not just one big spiral staircase (which I hate, because it makes me so dizzy).

The first part of the climb takes you out on to a narrow balcony under the dome which overlooks the inside of the church. The inside of the dome is painted with a representation of the Last Judgement. The scenes from hell are quite disturbing. There is a skeleton with a scythe rounding up people to send them to hell. A faceless monster chomps on naked men. It's rather detailed and we spent a bit of time taking it all in. The balcony is so narrow that it is one way only and no passing. We couldn't stray too long because of the people who were waiting behind us.

The second part of the climb is easy. Just normal stairways, back inside the walls of the church. On the right, the dome wall curves away from you.

The third bit of the climb is the fun part. You have to climb over the top of the dome. Climbing this stair case had a bit of an Alice in Wonderland feel to it. It's a staircase built into a curved floor. Going up it was quite easy. Later on we had to climb down it which was a little disorientating.

Finally, you climb one last steep ladder to emerge into the bright sunshine. The view from the top is impressive. But, of course it is. You're standing a top the tallest building in the city overlooking the beautiful city of Florence.





More photos on Flickr.

For our fourth wedding anniversary, Andrew and I spent the weekend in Florence. We visited the Academia and the Uffizi. We climbed the Duomo. We did a side trip to Sienna and San Gigimano. We soaked up the sunshine. We ate gelato. As wedding anniversaries go, it was pretty perfect. Yes, we're very lucky.

They say you are either a Florence person or a Venice person. They are two different cities with two different personalities. You can't love them both equally. (Like the Sydney / Melbourne debate, I guess. )

Now I loved Venice, so before our trip to Florence, I wondered which city would be my favourite. Florence or Venice?

To tell you the truth, I didn't get Florence until we climbed the hill to Piazza Michelangelo. There is a fantastic view of the city from the Piazza. The Duomo dwarfs the sunny yellow houses surrounding it. Standing up there, you can imagine that you've travelled back in time to the Renaissance. (Well, if you ignore the cars zooming around and the sound of ambulance sirens.)

With that view, I fell in love with Florence.

So Florence or Venice? Am I allowed to love both? I'm such a hussy...

Almost 30 years ago, Mum and Dad also climbed the tower of Pisa. Here are a couple of photos from their trip. This was way (way, way!) before digital cameras so there are only two photos (compared to the hundred or so Andrew and I took).



I love how there is a little, orange car parked right in front of the Tower. (Please excuse the dodgy photoshop job. There was a smudge on the photo.)



When Mum and Dad climbed the tower it actually had more of a lean than it does today. Recent restoration work straightened the tower by 45 centimetres, returning it to the position it was in 1838. So Andrew and I actually climbed an older version of the tower than Mum and Dad. We're time travellers!

More photos on Flickr

To get to Cinque Terre, we had the option of flying to Genoa or Pisa. In the end we decided on Pisa because it was cheaper (0p flights! yay!) and really who could resist a visit to that most famous mistake, The Leaning Tower of Pisa. On our last day in Italy, we left Manarola early in the morning and caught a train straight to Pisa. We left our luggage at the deposito bagagli at the train station, along with the rest of the tourists who'd also alighted from the train. It would seem that a quick pit-stop to see the Leaning Tower is the thing to do.

I think the word that I'd use to describe the Leaning Tower of Pisa is fun. When you arrive at the Piazza one of the first things you see (apart from the Dome, the Cathedral and the Tower) is tourists all lined up doing the famous "pushing the tower" shot. I'm sure you've seen it. You stand with your hands up in the air, and take a photo which makes it look like you are holding the tower up. Either that or you lean with the tower, or hug the tower. It's all a bit of silliness but who can resist this bit of fun? (Not Andrew and I, you can see our examples below. For once I didn't stand out as peculiar when I took the photos of the kids.)


Climbing the Tower is lots of fun too. It's a little bit expensive at 15 euro a piece but it's an experience I wouldn't have missed for the world. Just walking through the front door is a disorientating experience. After walking through a door that is slanted at a ridiculous angle, you've entered into an Alice in Wonderland like reality. You technically climb up the spiral staircase but it's more like up, up, up, then flat, flat, flat, then down, down, down... and then back to the up. I found walking the terraces that encircle the outside of the tower a little bit scary. The photos we took just don't manage to catch the strange perspective you have of the world around you. The world is right and you're just a little bit crazy. It was better than a ride at a funfair.



Later that evening when we'd finally made it back to London (after a typically crap Ryanair journey) I said to Andrew... "don't you find it surreal that at lunchtime today we were standing on the Leaning Tower of Pisa and now we're at home in our bed." And it's the same with all our trips. I'm very grateful to be lucky enough to see these places. Places that I've wanted to see since I was a little girl.

Some Tower Trivia for you:

• the tower leans to the southwest at an angle of almost 4 degrees.
  
  
• the tower started to lean shortly after construction begun in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation and loose soil.
  
  
• Engineers built the higher floors (fourth floor and above), with one side taller than the other to try to compensate for the lean. This means the tower is actually curved. (You can see curve in the photos.)
  
  
• In May 2008, after yet another round of restoration work on the tower, they announced that the tower had stopped moving for the first time in history. They declared that it would be stable for the next 200 years.
  
  

More photos on Flickr