Pisa

6th September 2009

We arrived into Pisa around lunchtime, and with some fairly s*** directions on how to get to our hostel we set out in search of a bus. Being a Sunday with irregular bus services also made it difficult to figure out what we needed to do. We eventually found where the bus left from, and in us wondering around outside the train station, a nice old lady gave us two tickets for the bus that she hadn't used. We jumped on a bus, keeping an eye out for street names, which proved to be difficult because the Italians don't seem to be too keen on putting up signs. Eventually the bus driver gave us a yell and showed us where to get off which was helpful. We wandered down the street and came to a crossroad, which the hostel was on. We were looking for number 16 so turned left and walked down for a bit, couldn't work out the numbering, so crossed back and went right. We did this 4 times, not being able to find number 16. After about 15 minutes, walking left, then right, we eventually found the place that we were staying. It was just some guy's house, which he'd turned into a small hostel. It was a grand old library style room that we had, and the guy running it was really friendly and helpful.

As we only had the afternoon in Pisa we sent off on foot to find the main attraction of the relatively small city. We passed through the "New" city walls, but they looked fairly old, and found ourselves in the 'tourist hub'. We grabbed some lunch at a nice place just nearby the church and tower, before heading over to see the leaning tower. The first impression is that it was actually quite small. I was expecting some great big, massive tower, but it was actually not that big. The lean though was pretty impressive. We walked around the lovely grounds that house the tower and the church and a few other buildings, before taking the customary tourist shot of trying to push the tower over. It was necessary to book a time to climb the tour, so we did that, and had 2 hours to wait until we could go up. We spent the time looking through all the little tourist souvenir shops and wandering through the pedestrian streets of Pisa. We found some guys who were leasing bikes and scooters, and it was only 5 Euros for both of us for 40 minutes, so we thought that we might as well to fill in some more time. We saddled up into the side-by-side tandem bike, and went peddling. I had the steering controls, while Dan just had the fake steering wheel. The guy, who leased the bike to us, gave us a map with a route that would take about 40 minutes. Needless to say, we got incredibly lost, ended up on major roads with buses and cars, went up one way roads the wrong way, across cobblestones, which was a bit rough and ended up back at the hire place 10 minutes earlier than planned. So much for his route taking 40 minutes! We covered three times the amount of the city than his little plan. Dan did most of the peddling, I was quite happy to sit and let him do all the hard work - but I was steering!By the time we got back we went and grabbed an ice cream (Apparently Banana is Bonita??) and then went over and put our bags into the required locker and went and waited to climb the tower. It was funny climbing up the stairs to the top; it was easy to tell when you were walking towards the leaning side, and when you were walking away from it. The circular staircase went around the edge of the inside of the building until about half way up, then we had to wait so we could climb the small spiral staircase up to the top. At the top there are several bells that are perched up there and its possible to walk completely around the edge. It's bloody scary being on the leaning side, with only a handrail to keep you in. We made the final climb to the very top of the tower up another scary, but this time exposed, staircase. The views were fantastic, but I was terrified (and I think Dan was a little scared this time too) so we headed down again. Going down was just has hard at times, when you were going against the lean, especially because most of the stairs have massive big smooth dips in them from the continuous usage.

Back on solid ground, we picked up a drink and lazed about on the grass, in the shade of the tour for an hour or so. We grabbed some dinner at another nearby café. My pasta was absolutely delicious, but it contained about 4 pieces of ravioli, so I was very helpful and helped Dan finish off his pizza!

We got back to the hostel at around 9 and just crashed into bed. I don't think there was another single person staying at the hostel, so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves - not that we used it.

The next morning we said goodbye to Francesco, the lovely owner, and set off back to the train station for breakfast and to figure out a tricky train trip to Siena.