March 20, 2023 - Pistoia

Another day where it was supposed to rain but when the sun came out, we headed for the train station and bought tickets to Pistoia. Rumor has it that that is where the handheld pistol was invented. I don’t know if it is true or not. It was supposed to be a quiet place. There are certainly few tourists, so it is quiet in that sense, but there was a lot of vehicular traffic. We finally found our way to the old part of town, after stopping to visit the Santa Barbara fortress. It was built in the 14^th century for Cosimo de Medici. It is only open to the public on the 1^st and 3^rd Monday of the month, so we were lucky to be able to visit. It was free entry too so an added bonus. I guess they don’t have enough tourists to warrant paying someone to sell tickets. We passed quite a bit of time exploring inside the fortress, climbing up the tower and going around on the ramparts.

We then proceeded to the square where the cathedral and baptistery was. But the doors were closed and there was no place to even have a small peek inside. The city hall had its doors open so we entered as far as the security check machines and took a few pictures. There were a lot of frescos painted on the ceilings and walls.

We then continued our geo tour of the city stopping for a light lunch. After walking a couple of km in search of the basilica we found it about 200 yards from the place we had lunch. This church was opened so we entered.

We took the 4:15 train back to Firenze and arrived back at our apartment at 5:10. Home for the rest of the evening.

We received a surprise call from Chris and Henri while Nathalie was cooking supper. It was nice to see them. Henri had a new haircut since the last call. The curls are gone again for the time being. Apparently, Chris had to have one first so that Henri would agree to sit in the chair.