12 May - Lucca

Today we headed back to Pisa airport on the bus to collect Roger and Alison, friends from Tidworth.  It was a day in which we learned the vagaries of Italian timetabling.   

We had checked the timetable on the internet and there was a bus at 11.00 which would get us to Pisa in time to meet the plane at 12.00.  Perfect.  Tickets in hand we set off with darkening skies threatening to dump rain upon us.  When we got to the bus stop however it seemed that the single timetable on the internet was some sort of combination of two timetables posted there: one for during the school term and one for other periods.  We could not work out why a bus link to Pisa airport should in any way be tied to school terms and furthermore we had no idea of the Italian term dates but we did know that in Italy, with all the saints’ days they have, there could be any number of non-school days to add to the confusion.  There was a risk that the next bus was not at 11.00 but half an hour later and that could be a problem to our plans.  It was easily checked by popping into the ticket office.  Oh dear, pinned to the glass were another three temporary looking timetable to Pisa and there seemed to be both similarities and differences to those we had already seen.  However, we were put at ease when the woman behind the ticket counter assured us that the next bus to Pisa airport was at 11.00.

By 11.15 we were not really panicked: this was Italy after all.  A group of older Brits descended from another bus commenting that they had made it in time to catch the 11.30 to Pisa airport.  I mentioned that the bus was due at 11.00 but they seemed to think they had been told otherwise and so – clearly doubting me - one of them went into the ticket office to check. ‘Definitely 11.30’ she said on returning, ‘the woman selling the tickets confirmed it’.  It all seemed very arbitrary and so we decided to just sit it out.

Despite it all we made it to the airport on time and spent the afternoon once again showing friends the delights of the city and in the evening we spent an hour at one of the Puccini concerts, held in the church in which he was baptised