My Angle on PISA

Advantages: Big WOW factor
Disadvantages: None

...One of the highlights of our trip to Tuscany last year was to be our visit to Pisa. To be accurate, the main attraction was not so much the city of Pisa itself, charming though it undoubtedly is, but the Field of Miracles*. Well, to be punctiliously precise, it wasn't even the Field of Miracles that had our anticipatory juices flowing, but The Leaning Tower of Pisa in particular. * The Field of Miracles is the area housing the Duomo, Tower, Baptistry and associated buildings. To be honest, if you discount the Field of Miracles, I'm not sure that much else in Pisa merits a visit although I expect some Pisaphile will soon put me straight on that count. However, it can't be denied that the seething masses that are constantly disgorged from the tourist buses usually have one thing in mind and that's to take one of those corny snaps...

proxam 13.01.2007 (15.02.2009) · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Review of The Leaning Tower of Pisa

I wanna a Pisa that erection!

Advantages: Breath taking views, easy to get to and around
Disadvantages: Them damn bicycles

...Last Wednesday a few of my work colleagues and I went along to Pisa for the day, after spotting a bargain on the Ryanair website which involved us paying 2p per ticket with Ryanair and £20 in Airport Tax. Having never been to before this was a first taste of Italy for me and I was especially looking forward to seeing the Leaning Tower in all its glory Pisa is located in Tuscany, still surrounded by its 12-century City Walls on the north bank of the river Arno with just over 100,000 inhabitants. The centre of Pisa is easily accessible from Galileo Galilei Airport, which is about a mile away from the City Centre. The Airport itself has numerous facilities including a Bureau de Change, Cash machine's and ATM's as well as car hire centres, restaurants, café's and bars and a few shops. To get from the Airport to the centre of Pisa we...

kappaslappa 03.10.2005 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Review of Pisa (Italy)

Pisa off on holiday

Advantages: Good price, great rooms and breakfast
Disadvantages: not best surroundings

...This was a definite 'how far can we go on a budget at Easter where it might be warm?' affair. Thank God for budget airlines. Me, the wife and the nipper/satan spawn off to Pisa on Ryanair from Liverpool for about £140 should do it. But where to stay? I was all for sleeping on a beach but Italy in April wouldn't stop hypothermia I was told. So it was time to scour the internet for somewhere with 5 days availability, vaguely out of season and cheap. We had about £400 to play with. Not too bad. The wonders of the modern family meant that some of our kids were spending time with their real parents so we were down from 5 to 1. It wasn't my idea to conceive a child between us that we couldn't ship out. Damn female hormones. Rather than spend our time mourning, we thought it best to bugger off of on holiday without them to ease the pain...

dhillcrest 27.03.2008 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Review of Green Park Resort, Pisa

Love is in the air in Pisa!

Advantages: reasonably priced for a four star hotel!
Disadvantages: Location, far out from the centre of Pisa

...We stayed in this hotel in February 06 when visiting Pisa The main drawback, it has to be said straight away, is the location. It's about 10 minutes by bus outside the main town of Pisa. There is a bus which stops right outside the hotel about every 15 minutes and tickets can be bought from the reception desk, so this did not put us off and didn't cause any problems for us while we were there. If you are willing to travel for a great hotel, then this is it! I believe that there is a shuttle bus during peak months into the centre of Pisa. This four star hotel has 55 double rooms, and 2 junior suites. 2 of the double rooms have disabled facilities. The rooms are large and ours had a double bed, large desk, satellite television, mini bar (which was very reasonably priced!!), large bathroom which is well lit, wardrobe, easy chair...

sharkel 19.01.2007 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Hotel Repubblica Marinara, Pisa

Pisa was good for a city break

Advantages: Easy to get to, good base for a few days
Disadvantages: Crowded with Tourists, touts selling cheap watches

...Ryanair offered 99p flights, so we decided to have a 4 day break in Pisa. We arrived at Pisa airport which was only a mile out of town. I expected to find leaflets packed with info at the airport - but no. So we wandered outside and found the bus stop & I had already found out that is was apparently easy to get a bus into the centre. We tried to buy a ticket from a machine, but it wouldn't give us tickets so we asked the driver of a bus that drew up and he tried to help & had a problem, so he sold us a couple of tickets for 1.50 Euros. I was starting to feel that Italy didn't really want Tourists to find out anything! Anyway we saw a sign to our hotel, hopped off the bus and a few yards down the road was the hotel. They were brilliant, they checked us in at once- at 10am in the morning! There were signs all over Pisa to...

flyingfox 18.05.2005 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of Pisa (Italy)

Pisa cake

Advantages: Cheap, Easy, Final cost includes everything, Good communication
Disadvantages: Need to know starting airport, Flight times changed

...Some friends are living in Italy and we decided it would be lovely to see them and take a short holiday. They told us that the best thing to do was to get a Ryanair flight from Stansted to Pisa and then travel to them from there. I went to the Ryanair site, and there was Pisa: £3.99! This was the first time I had booked a flight on the internet, and it was a good job I knew where I was flying from. When you put in the details, you need to put the starting airport first, otherwise you don't get the correct list of destinations. Putting in the destination first doesn't work, you still get all the possible starting airports. A bit of experimentation has revealed that if you start off pretending you are flying from your destination, you can get this important bit of information and then start the booking again the right way around...

markvm 23.04.2003 (16.10.2004) · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of ryanair.com

mediauk.com

Advantages: A decent media website...
Disadvantages: ...but no better than that

...Anyone looking for a job in the media, or even an insight into the big wide world of it, could do much worse than look here to begin with - mediauk.com. Operating since 1994, it lists current available jobs in radio, tv and print media, recent news articles on all these forms of media and a discussion board. Now being a graduate in a degree of this field of work, the jobs board has been an interest to me for quite a while...but don't expect to find work instantly. Anything but. Copious numbers of people view these adverts (you can see how many exactly in the job listings), but don't let that deter you of course - if you're good and experienced enough then you'll come across the job for you eventually. The jobs listed usually just contain a small job description and contact details for where to send your cover letter and CV, but...

carl.mcqueen 14.10.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of mediauk.com

dictionary.com

Advantages: Good free service
Disadvantages: Too many adverts & pop-ups

...Dictionary.com?! Dictionary.com?! Seriously?! Why, yes, something that seems so simply and basic has it's place on the World Wide Web (yes, I'm aware of the irony!), but fear not...it's not as basic as it seems! Rather than just typing in a word to discover its definition, dictionary.com does provide a far greater service. Since it's launch way back in 1995 (were websites even around then?!), it's one of the world's most popular services, as naturally many people will just type in 'dictionary.com' into their browser if they need to find the definition of a word...even if they don't know the website exists, it makes sense to have a crack at it! The website does provide a thesaurus option, translator and encyclopaedia...for anyone even contemplating steering away from Wikipedia, God forbid! But there are other quirks to the website...

carl.mcqueen 15.10.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of dictionary.com

gumtree.com

Advantages: Very detailed
Disadvantages: Open to fraud

...Many will remember a time when the classified section of a local newspaper was all there was if you wanted to look for second-hand goods, or look for a place to live without going to an estate agent?but not anymore. Goodbye the classified section; hello Gumtree.com To quote the frontpage of the website, Gumtree advertises ?Homes, jobs, cars, sofas, vintage records? anything, really??and they?re not wrong! It lists it?s good in cities across the country. And not just the capital cities of the UK, but anywhere from Brighton to Nottingham, from Oxford to Aberdeen. This handy tool can help you look for exactly what you?re after without having to sift through adverts from cities hundreds of miles from you. Now, to indicate the scale of the website, in the London section, the ?Flats and Houses? adverts totals 124,174!! That seems a bit...

carl.mcqueen 21.10.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of gumtree.com

TVCatchup.com

Advantages: Great website to watch TV on, for free
Disadvantages: None

...The television - the bane of most people's lives, spent whiling away the hours whilst sat in front of it when you could be doing things more productive. Then the Internet came along as a pretender to the thrown...but never would the picture box be knocked off it's perch, so the internet did the next best thing - broadcast the television on the internet. This is where TVCatchup comes in. Now, first off it's important to note that this website differs from, say, the BBC iPlayer because it is not a 'catch-up' service, or is it similar to YouTube by having readily available any old rubbish. No, this is quite literally television on the computer. The web address is simple - www.tvcatchup.com - and the idea is just as so. It streams the channels you can enjoy on a standard Freeview box via your computer screen, completely free...

carl.mcqueen 21.12.2009 · Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Review of tvcatchup.com