Day 28 - Pisa

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Today was checkout day from Sez's massively under equipped AirB&B so we rose, showered (thankful it would be our last shower in that horribly blocked shower tray), ate our breakfast from our €1 bowls (sharing my travel spoon, thanks Sez) and wandered across Piazza Leopoldo to catch the #4 bus again, to Firenze SMN station. We dropped our bags at the left luggage with the grumpiest staff member we've seen so far (to the point of it being comical), I grabbed a coffee and we went for a wander around the area near the station and found a market for me to search for my Florence patch. We then headed back and boarded our train to Pisa. Rather than sliding doors, this train had little glass swing doors, like something out of a futuristic bar in the Wild West. Dan went through first and I only had one had free (the other clutching my fresh, hot coffee) so that was half of it spilt down my front when the doors swung back in my face!

The train to Pisa was just under an hour and ran pretty frequently, it also did not require any seat reservations, so we could effectively return whenever we wanted as long as we were back in time for our 19:00 train to Milan. Once we arrived in Pisa it was a 20-25 minute walk from the station to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Piazza die Miracoli and Pisa Cathedral all of which were clustered together. The tower was quite impressive and actually had more of a lean than I had expected, I found it really surprising that A) it hadn't fallen over already and B) that it was still open and claimable as an observation point!

We stayed here taking snaps of the tower and the surrounding buildings and areas for a good hour or so, we obviously had to pose for the cliché tourist photos e tower up in one way or another. Once we were done, we looked up good bakeries nearby on TripAdvisor, determined to get a cannoli after yesterday's disappointment, and were happy to find that we were standing 25mtrs from the #1 bakery in Pisa! We both got a 'Cannoli Siciliano' and an iced coffee of sorts which was 1/2 coffee and 1/2 sorbet, kind of like a slushie.

Having double checked TripAdvisor for any other worthwhile attractions to see and finding nothing that interested us, we decided to start heading back to the station. On our way we found a little church on the river side that was home to a fragment of Jesus' crown of thorns (supposedly, I couldn't see it on display) which we popped in to. With just a little dash through the station to catch the train leaving imminently, rather than waiting around for another hour, we made it on the train and back to Florence. All in all we had only spent about 3 hours in Pisa but we saw what we wanted to see, so we're happy to just chill out in the station for a bit and cool off and buy dinner before jumping on the train to Milan.

The train was a little delayed but we still got in by 9pm, more than enough time to navigate the metro system across to our hostel for the next two nights, 'Gogol Ostello', before the 22:30 checking cut off. We checked in and grabbed a shower, our room mates checked in not long after us, some younger, posh sounding, English girls who we only really exchanged pleasantries with, no real conversation and then we plotted out a plan around Milan for the next day before calling it a night.

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