The Leaning Tower of Pisa

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After breakfast this morning, we walked out the square near our apartment and bought tickets for the bus from the bar on the corner (odd how things work here). The bus takes a brief trip through town before heading up to the train station. We arrived at the station shortly before the next train to Pisa, but we ended up behind some slow people at the ticket machine and missed that first train. Fortunately there are plenty of trains to Pisa and we caught one 20 minutes later.

In contrast to the train that got us here from Rome, this regional train moves slower but only cost 22 Euro for all four of us. From this slower train, you get more of a sense of the landscape. The backyards we passed reminded me of Evy's mother's garden with neatly trimmed fruit trees, bundles of branches, and carefully tending vegetable gardens with rows of stakes for tomatoes.

Once in Pisa, we decided to walk the two kilometres to the tower in order to see a bit of this city. From a quick look, it seems to be a quite compact and interesting place. The walk took us over a bridge towards the older part of the town. Beside the river is an very tiny but ornately decorated white church. It almost looks like it is built to scale as it is so small but so complete.

Like in Florence, Pisa's narrow streets and three story buildings hide the tower until the last minute. Following our GPS, we knew we were very close to it, but it still seems a surprise to suddenly be upon the tower.

Though there were crowds, it wasn't as packed as I had imagined. Despite the fact that you know you are visiting the leaning tower, it still seems to make an impression in its lopsided way, particularly when you see the lopsided front door.

We snapped a few pictures of our world traveling penguin mascot before finding a place to sit down and have our picnic lunch. After lunch we faked the requisite pictures of us juxtaposed so that we looked like we were holding up the tower or leaning on it (obviously not an original idea). Evy and Joshua wanted to go up the tower and so they headed off to buy tickets while Benjamin and I checked out the souvenir stands. Unfortunately, the wait to go up the tower was going to be a few hours and so Evy and Joshua joined us again shortly. Joshua bought an Italy ball cap and then we walked back through the town to the station, stopping on the way to photograph the tiny church by the river.

We reached the Pisa station just in time for the next train and quickly found ourselves back in Florence. We got off the bus in downtown Florence and walked down past the Duomo towards the river. The rain had drowned out the complex chalk drawings that the artists do on the pavement, and they were setting up again.

Down by the river we took a quick walk out onto famous Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge not mined by the retreating Nazis in 1945. Built in 1345, the bridge now houses more high end jewelry stores than artists, though the banks of the river along side it have more artists and craftspeople.
After touring the stalls alongside the river, we headed back into narrow streets and had a final Florence gelato, before buying food for dinner at the grocery store and walking back to our apartment. As we are off to the relatives in the North tomorrow, we made it an early night.

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