Insomnia and the World Not Sleeping Record

In 2006 we visited Tuscany and stayed At the Hotel Royal Victoria which was a grand old building but was unfortunately located on a busy main road.  As soon as the light went out the traffic noise immediately increased in volume and I worried that I might be about to suffer a night of enforced insomnia.

It became increasingly intolerable to the point that I even contemplated overcoming my reluctance to close the rotting wooden shutters.  This would have been useless because it was clear that even after carefully maneuvering them into position this would make no discernable difference at all to the appalling din because there was a constant drone of vehicle noise made worse by the rattling engines of the Vespa scooters (bzzzzzz-bzzzzzz-bzzzzzz); Vespa is Italian for wasp and believe me these things are well named; they are a complete bloody nuisance!  This was accompanied by the piercing sirens of the police cars (da-loo-da-la, da-loo-da-la) which although quite lyrical during the day are downright diabolical at night and these were competing with the shrieking ambulances (do-dah, do-dah, do-dah), and worst of all there was a loose inspection cover in the road directly below the room which of course every vehicle just had to drive over with irritating regularity (ker-chunk, ker-chunk).  Italy of course is the home of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati and a nation with a reputation for a love of pace and reckless behaviour behind the wheel so everything seemed to be travelling at top speed and using full throttle.

I eventually managed to block out the noise (it’s amazing what half a litre of Chianti can do) and eventually dropped off to sleep.  But not for long and it became so unbearable that Kim even contemplated sleeping in the bath tub at the back of the room just to get as far away from the street noise as possible.  This was truly a room for insomniacs and the more I tried to blot out the dreadful noise the worse it got.  On May 11^th 2007 a Cornishman, Tony Wright, beat a forty three year old Guinness World Record by staying awake for eleven days and eleven nights.  If he had booked in to the Hotel Victoria in Pisa he could have gone on much, much longer.

We couldn’t possible put up with another night of traffic disturbance and Kim had worried all day about a repeat of the sleepless experience so back at the hotel the next afternoon there was only one thing to do and that was to apply for a room change away from the relentless traffic noise.

Almost every guest review said that eventually they had to make the same request so I don’t suppose it came as a great surprise to the desk clerk to get this urgent application.  He searched the hotel register and found an alternative room at the rear of the hotel and apologised for the fact that we were moving from one of the best suites in the establishment to a basic standard room.  He seemed to think it was an odd decision and this has led me to the conclusion that Italians are obviously oblivious to traffic noise but quite frankly we couldn’t have been happier and were delighted to be transferred to an obviously inferior but crucially quieter room with a delightful roof garden outside.

We moved in, opened a bottle of red wine and because the weather was improving and Pisa had not had the heavy rain that we had experienced in Siena, sat outside to celebrate the transfer and enjoy the relative peace that the rear of the hotel offered.

Later we walked out to a nearby restaurant that we had picked out the day before and enjoyed an excellent meal of wild boar.  After dinner we went back to the new hotel room and after a final drink on the roof garden enjoyed a peaceful and undisturbed night’s sleep.  It was lovely.

Codice della Strada the Italian Highway Code

“To an American, Italian traffic is at first just down-right nonsense. It
seems hysterical, it follows no rule. You cannot figure what the driver
ahead or behind or beside you is going to do next and he usually does it!”     John Steinbeck

In Italy, traffic regulations currently in force were approved by the Legislative Decree number 285 of 30^th April 1992 and are contained in the Italian Highway Code called the Codice della Strada.

Anyone visiting a busy Italian city or town however may well however dispute that there is such a thing as a highway code in Italy.  I visited Naples in 1976 and was overwhelmed by the cacophony of blaring noise and the indiscipline on the roads and even after 1992 it wasn’t any better when I went to Florence in 2007.

Once again the town resembled a racetrack and this is because despite the best intentions of the rule book Italy has some ludicrously different driving rules to the rest of Europe and the traffic was murderously hectic on this Sunday morning.

Traffic lights are a good example of these different rules because each one resembles the starting grid of a formula one Grand Prix.  At an Italian traffic junction there is an intolerant commotion with cars all impatiently throbbing with engines growling, exhaust pipes fuming and clutch plates sizzling whilst behind the wheel the driver’s blood pressure reaches several degrees above boiling point.

A regard for the normal habits of road safety is curiously absent in Italy so although the traffic light colours are the same as elsewhere they mean completely different things.  Red means slow down, amber means go and green means that no rules apply!  At a junction an Italian driver simply points his car at the exit he is aiming for and five seconds before the lights go green, he shuts his eyes, presses the accelerator to the floor then races forward and may God have mercy on anything or anyone in his way.

Italian drivers also have a range of additional hand signals not used in most other countries, which means that for them holding the steering wheel is a bit of an inconvenience that makes driving even more exciting.

Once in Pisa  it was just my luck to get the craziest taxi driver on the rank.  He drove at madcap speeds into the city, dodging down back streets and directing the car into impossibly tight spaces and then he rounded off this virtuoso lunatic performance by demonstrating some advanced driving skills that involved having two very loud and very animated mobile telephone conversations on two separate phones whilst steering the car with his knees. With his knees!  This man was clearly on the run from an asylum and nervous laughter only encouraged him to play some more tricks as he switched lanes and negotiated the busy traffic with careless abandon.

Interestingly the Codice della Strada prohibits the use of the horn in built up areas but this rule is treated with complete contempt and an Italian driver has to always keep one hand free for this purpose.  Once in a hotel evening meal one of the waiters said that he had seen me earlier and he had tooted his horn and waved but I hadn’t seen him.  I explained that everyone was tooting their horns so how could I possibly have picked his out from all the rest and he seemed to accept the explanation but it left me wondering if they have different horn toots for different things and I listened out for that in future for the subtle variations I but detected nothing but a blaze of chaotic sounds.

Italy’s roads are dangerous and 2004 was probably the worst year and according to EuroStat there were thirty two thousand, nine hundred and fifty-one road deaths in the EU and five thousand, six-hundred and twenty-five of them were in Italy. That is about 17%.  In the ten years up to 2004 the Italians slaughtered sixty-five thousand, one hundred and twenty five people in traffic accidents so it pays to have your wits about you when crossing the road and why if you want to be sure of avoiding death on the highway in Italy it is probably safest to visit Venice.

A Life in a Year – 11th August, Train Ride From Pisa to Lucca

We had a little breakfast across the road from the hotel and then we walked to the train station because today we planned to go to Lucca.  On the way it started to rain so we looked for a bar to shelter in until it passed.  The menu was reasonably inexpensive but hidden in small print was information that we would be charged nearly €2 each for service which was going to double the price of the drinks that we were intending to order.   In the old days it was customary to leave the addition of a tip to the discretion of the customer now many bars and restaurants just add it on anyway and then still expect you to leave a few extra coins as well.  This represents customer fleecing on a grand scale and not being prepared to pay this extortionate sum we got up and left and with some difficulty found a bar without this arrangement.

The train arrived on time and we took the short thirty minute ride to Lucca.  Once we were out of the city we passed through fields of arable farm land and were pleased to pass through acres of sunflowers all bobbing their heads in the sun and shining like a swaying cloth of gold.

Lucca is everything that you expect from a Tuscan medieval city.  It is the largest Italian city with its medieval wall still completely intact and inside it has a number of attractive piazzas and a labyrinth of narrow streets to get confused and lost in and we explored some back streets and alleyways before settling down at a pavement café for lunch in a side street near the Piazza St Michele. 

We liked the Cathedral Square and the buskers entertaining the crowds, the spacious Piazza Napoleone and the Piazza San Michele but our favourite was the Piazza Anfiteato that was built on the site of an old Roman amphitheatre and had retained its elliptical shape.

Lucca is also famous for being the birthplace of the composer Pucini whose best known works include La Bohème, Tosca and Madam Butterfly, but most people will be familiar with Nessun Dorma which has become an opera standard.  It is an interesting fact that Pucini contracted throat cancer and he was one of the first people to be treated by radiation therapy.  This wasn’t a great success and he died shortly afterwards from complications that caused continuous bleeding from the treated area and finally a heart attack.

Later in the afternoon we walked back to the train station, stopping for ice cream on the way, and took the train back to Pisa.  After some quiet time on the hotel terrace Sally and I returned to last night’s restaurant where I enjoyed a tasty seafood pasta and Sally had the tiramisu that she had been promising herself all day.

After dinner it was time for me to go and despite thje hectic traffic I made it back in one piece and then caught the train to the airport where after an effortless check in I waited for the plane and then slept the whole way home.  It had been a good two days and I had satisfied myself that I had no need for concern for the girls as they continued their grand tour of Italy.

A Life in a Year – 10th August, The Leaning Tower of Pisa

After finishing her University course in 2007 my daughter Sally quickly found employment as a school teacher and being unaccustomed to a salary and a credit balance in her bank account quickly set about making arrangements to get it spent.  What better way than to go on holiday, so in early August she set off for a whistle stop back packing trip to Italy.  Before she went she invited me to meet her for a night at the end of the first week and we agreed on Pisa.

As she was planning to stay in hostel accommodation, Sally’s motive was to make sure that at the half way stage she would be guaranteed a hotel room with a decent bed and en-suite facilities.  I have to confess that my motive was to some large extent to make sure that she was alright.

I flew to Pisa on 10^th August on an uneventful early morning flight and arrived a couple of hours later in a bright sun-kissed Galileo Galilei Airport.  The Airport is only a very short distance from the city so I took a bus and within minutes I was in the Campo di Miracoli and admiring the Leaning Tower.  I checked in at the Hotel Francesco and then sat in a bar for a couple of Pironi beers while I waited for Sally and her friend Natalie to join me from their previous nights stop in Bologna.   They arrived two hours later and I was pleased to see that they were both in good health and looking well, clearly I had been worrying unnecessarily about their trip.

Unpacking is an unnecessary distraction when there is sightseeing to do so they left their packs and we went straight out into the street and walked back the short distance to the Campo.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is probably one of the most instantly recognisable buildings in Europe and probably the whole World.  Although intended to stand vertically of course, the tower began leaning over soon after construction began in 1173 due to a poorly prepared ground that allowed the inadequate foundations to shift.  Today the height of the tower is nearly fifty-six metres from the ground on the lowest side and nearly fifty-seven metres on the highest side. The width of the walls at the base is a little over four metres and at the top two and a half metres. Its weight is estimated at fourteen thousand five hundred tonnes (that is about six hundred fully loaded UK dustcarts) so little wonder then that it started to sink. 

We purchased immediate entry tickets to the museum next door and all of the other magnificent buildings at the Campo dei Miracoli including the Duomo (the Cathedral) and the Babtistry that were both constructed on the same unstable sand as the Tower and also lean half a degree from centre.  We finished the tour by visiting the impressively and recently restored Camposanto or monumental cemetery with some renovated plaster wall paintings that had been destroyed during the Second-World-War by Allied bombing raids as the Germans were being pushed out of Italy and back towards Central Europe.

We rested for a while on the hotel terrace where I enjoyed some more beer and the girls caught up on their internet correspondence and then we returned at the appointed time for our visit to the tower.  We had to climb the two hundred and ninety four steps spiral staircase that takes visitors up and which due to the absence of windows, and therefore orientation, was reminiscent of a fairground wacky house attraction, especially when although we knew that we were ascending sometimes according to the angle of the tilt it felt as though we were going down at the same time, which was a very weird experience. 

I liked the Leaning Tower of Pisa because it lived up to all of my expectations, I tried to bring to mind anything else that was famous for leaning but all I could think of was Oliver Reed after forty pints of beer and George Formby who used to lean on lamp posts looking at ladies.

A Life in a Year – 11th May, Royal Victoria Hotel Pisa and Insomnia

We visited Tuscany and stayed At the Hotel Royal Victoria which was a grand old building but was unfortunately located on a busy main road.  As soon as the light went out the traffic noise immediately increased in volume and I worried that I might be about to suffer a night of enforced insomnia.

It became increasingly intolerable to the point that I even contemplated overcoming my reluctance to close the rotting wooden shutters.  This would have been useless because it was clear that even after carefully maneuvering them into position this would make no discernable difference at all to the appalling din because there was a constant drone of vehicle noise made worse by the rattling engines of the Vespa scooters (bzzzzzz-bzzzzzz-bzzzzzz); Vespa is Italian for wasp and believe me these things are well named; they are a complete bloody nuisance!  This was accompanied by the piercing sirens of the police cars (da-loo-da-la, da-loo-da-la) which although quite lyrical during the day are downright diabolical at night and these were competing with the shrieking ambulances (do-dah, do-dah, do-dah), and worst of all there was a loose inspection cover in the road directly below the room which of course every vehicle just had to drive over with irritating regularity (ker-chunk, ker-chunk).  Italy of course is the home of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati and a nation with a reputation for a love of pace and reckless behaviour behind the wheel so everything seemed to be travelling at top speed and using full throttle.

I eventually managed to block out the noise (it’s amazing what half a litre of Chianti can do) and eventually dropped off to sleep.  But not for long and it became so unbearable that Kim even contemplated sleeping in the bath tub at the back of the room just to get as far away from the street noise as possible.  This was truly a room for insomniacs and the more I tried to blot out the dreadful noise the worse it got.  On May 11^th 2007 a Cornishman, Tony Wright, beat a forty three year old Guinness World Record by staying awake for eleven days and eleven nights.  If he had booked in to the Hotel Victoria in Pisa he could have gone on much, much longer.

We couldn’t possible put up with another night of traffic disturbance and Kim had worried all day about a repeat of the sleepless experience so back at the hotel the next afternoon there was only one thing to do and that was to apply for a room change away from the relentless traffic noise.

Almost every guest review said that eventually they had to make the same request so I don’t suppose it came as a great surprise to the desk clerk to get this urgent application.  He searched the hotel register and found an alternative room at the rear of the hotel and apologised for the fact that we were moving from one of the best suites in the establishment to a basic standard room.  He seemed to think it was an odd decision and this has led me to the conclusion that Italians are obviously oblivious to traffic noise but quite frankly we couldn’t have been happier and were delighted to be transferred to an obviously inferior but crucially quieter room with a delightful roof garden outside.

We moved in, opened a bottle of red wine and because the weather was improving and Pisa had not had the heavy rain that we had experienced in Siena, sat outside to celebrate the transfer and enjoy the relative peace that the rear of the hotel offered.

Later we walked out to a nearby restaurant that we had picked out the day before and enjoyed an excellent meal of wild boar.  After dinner we went back to the new hotel room and after a final drink on the roof garden enjoyed a peaceful and undisturbed night’s sleep.  It was lovely.

A Life in a Year – 30th April, Codice della Strada the Italian Highway Code

In Italy, traffic regulations currently in force were approved by the Legislative Decree number 285 of 30^th April 1992 and are contained in the Italian Highway Code called the Codice della Strada.

Anyone visiting a busy Italian city or town however may well however dispute that there is such a thing as a highway code in Italy.  I visited Naples in 1976 and was overwhelmed by the cacophony of blaring noise and the indiscipline on the roads and even after 1992 it wasn’t any better when I went to Florence in 2007.

Once again the town resembled a racetrack and this is because despite the best intentions of the rule book Italy has some ludicrously different driving rules to the rest of Europe and the traffic was murderously hectic on this Sunday morning.

Traffic lights are a good example of these different rules because each one resembles the starting grid of a formula one Grand Prix.  At an Italian traffic junction there is an intolerant commotion with cars all impatiently throbbing with engines growling, exhaust pipes fuming and clutch plates sizzling whilst behind the wheel the driver’s blood pressure reaches several degrees above boiling point.

A regard for the normal habits of road safety is curiously absent in Italy so although the traffic light colours are the same as elsewhere they mean completely different things.  Red means slow down, amber means go and green means that no rules apply!  At a junction an Italian driver simply points his car at the exit he is aiming for and five seconds before the lights go green, he shuts his eyes, presses the accelerator to the floor then races forward and may God have mercy on anything or anyone in his way.

Italian drivers also have a range of additional hand signals not used in most other countries, which means that for them holding the steering wheel is a bit of an inconvenience that makes driving even more exciting.

Once in Pisa  it was just my luck to get the craziest taxi driver on the rank.  He drove at madcap speeds into the city, dodging down back streets and directing the car into impossibly tight spaces and then he rounded off this virtuoso lunatic performance by demonstrating some advanced driving skills that involved having two very loud and very animated mobile telephone conversations on two separate phones whilst steering the car with his knees. With his knees!  This man was clearly on the run from an asylum and nervous laughter only encouraged him to play some more tricks as he switched lanes and negotiated the busy traffic with careless abandon.

Interestingly the Codice della Strada prohibits the use of the horn in built up areas but this rule is treated with complete contempt and an Italian driver has to always keep one hand free for this purpose.  Once in a hotel evening meal one of the waiters said that he had seen me earlier and he had tooted his horn and waved but I hadn’t seen him.  I explained that everyone was tooting their horns so how could I possibly have picked his out from all the rest and he seemed to accept the explanation but it left me wondering if they have different horn toots for different things and I listened out for that in future for the subtle variations I but detected nothing but a blaze of chaotic sounds.

Italy’s roads are dangerous and 2004 was probably the worst year and according to EuroStat there were thirty two thousand, nine hundred and fifty-one road deaths in the EU and five thousand, six-hundred and twenty-five of them were in Italy. That is about 17%.  In the ten years up to 2004 the Italians slaughtered sixty-five thousand, one hundred and twenty five people in traffic accidents so it pays to have your wits about you when crossing the road and why if you want to be sure of avoiding death on the highway in Italy it is probably safest to visit Venice.