Pisa Italy 9 & 10 Oct 2013

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Pisa Italy 9 & 10 Oct 2013

We arrived at the camp site, Torre Pendente Camping Village in Pisa which was a 10 minute walk from the famous leaning Tower of Pisa. This was after a beautiful drive, partly on secondary roads and partly on the autostrade. We were now in the Tuscany Region with its mountains partly covered with terraced vineyards but a lot of native vegetation remains (I think!). The weather was patchy with the sun peaking out on occasions.

The camp site people gave us a fantastic map of Pisa, so after an end-of-day gin and tonic, we set off into town at about 7.00pm. After the short walk we were hit by the view of the Romanesque Baptistry, Cathedral and the mighty Tower. Wow, I didn’t realize that the Tower was on such a lean. It is 4 metres ‘out’ of plum!!! It was 4.47 metres out in 1993 but major work was done on the foundations which rectified the lean by 43.8cm.

The building of the tower started in 1173 and when they had built up to the 3^rd level, it started to lean one side back then. Building was stopped for 10 years and then they continued to built – with the lean!

We had a lovely dinner in a restaurant that had the Tower in the back ground. The weather was cool – quite pleasant. After dinner we walked through the town. I love a city at night. We came to a big square which was skirted with tables and chairs and 100s of Uni students. Pisa is a place where the best universities are. We also walked down to the river which was beautiful.

The next day we did some shopping in Pisa and because it had rained all night and was still raining, we decided not to walk around the city so drove north east for 30 kms to Lucca.

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