On our way from Rome to Florence, we made a detour to Pisa. We lugged our packs around the whole time! We got off the train, walked (and got lost) to the tower, and then got back on the train to Florence! We had heard from a few different people that Pisa was only worth visiting for a few hours and not to stay the night, so that's what we did. And it turns out they were very very right! To put it bluntly, besides the tower, baptistery and the cathedral, Pisa was disappointingly a bit of a dump!
Here is the piazza right outside the Pisa Centrale train station. Off we go (to get lost on the way) to the tower!
"Random Keith Haring painting on a wall" alert! Cool! It was in a sort of out-of-the-way street in an unremarkable area of town, so we thought it was just sort of weird...
On one of the bridges across the water on the way to the tower (this was after we had gotten lost and took the scenic route).
And finally...the tower of Pisa! Look! It's not leaning!
Oh wait...now it is.
And now...Cliff sitting by a fountain! You can find a lot of these fountains all over Rome and here in Pisa. You can drink from them...very convenient! We had lunch by this fountain, facing the tower, the baptistery and the cathedral. At a restaurant just where that yellow building is, Stefan bought a really gross "chicken" sandwich. What we thought was a breaded chicken patty was actually more like a breaded processed chicken meat slice! Yeach!!
Here is the cathedral (for which the leaning tower is the bell tower), and in the back is the baptistery. The tower is just to the right outside of the picture. When you walk into this area out of gross "regular" Pisa it's very jarring because this piazza is very different from the rest of the city. It's spacious, clean, and not at all grungy like the rest of town. It's almost like you've walked into a scale model or something!
The back of the cathedral!
It would be unfair to show you all the back but not the front...
3/4 shot! You can actually see the tower to the right of the cathedral in this photo. It looks like it's attached but it's actually separate!
A view from in front of the cathedral to the rest of the city. The strip of buildings that line the piazza which you see here were quite nice. Once you go beyond this row of buildings, that's where the dirtiness begins!
Another corner of the piazza.
Here is the baptistery. Behind it you see the cathedral, and behind that you see the tower.
Cliff is trying to fix the lean with his one finger.
And here's Stefan trying to push it over! Like the colosseum, this was the last photo taken of the tower before it was flung into outer space. It can now be found stuck in Pluto.
Leaving the piazza and traveling back to the train station.
Having our packs on us the whole time was definitely not fun!! Look at poor Stefan about to keel over!
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