What RTW travel blog can be complete without the cheesiest possible shots that have been done to death by tons of people the world over in front of majorly recognizable sights? Surely not this one! No matter how cliché, Jenn and I had both never seen the UNESCO listed Piazza del Duomo in Pisa and wanted a chance to hold it up the leaning tower, knock it over, and make general fools of ourselves. Our train taking us from Cinque Terre to Florence (Firenze to the locals) passed right through Pisa…so how could we not just pop out for some quick shots in front of this iconic Italian building? Well, we couldn’t. And they are cheese-tastic let me assure you!

We hopped off of the train in Pisa, and I am not sure why, but for some reason I expected the leaning tower to be right within the view of my seeking gaze. It wasn’t. And, we didn’t have any map/directions/indication of how to actually get to the leaning tower. You would think that with all of the tourists coming through here it would be more straight forward…perhaps that’s just me as an American talking though. We were only popping into Pisa for a couple of hours for pictures of the tower, lunch, and then onward the hour or so to Florence so we had all of our packs with us and sun was beating down as we paraded over to the bus stop to try and read the time tables.

Torre, Torre, Torre…Though we searched for a route to the torre, or tower, alas there was nothing quite so straight forward. Helen and I both have a bit of Italian under our belts and Jenn’s got Spanish, so we all branched out to inquire from strangers just how to get to the tower. One guy took pity on me and actually grabbed my hand (we were having trouble communicating in our mangled Italian/English) and walked me 500 feet around a corner and deposited me at a bus stop. Thanking him profusely with a mille grazie, I hollered for Jenn and Helen and we all waited mere minutes before hoping on a bus 4 – which dropped us off right on the doorstep of this tourist attraction.

Jenn and I parted ways with Helen who had already seen the leaning tower and was going to use the time to catch up on work, dropped our bags behind Helen’s chair in the coffee shop and then went to work for the next 45 minutes crafting a slew of pictures at the leaning tower. We took a walk around the complex and the churches and other structures were beautiful.

It really was wild though to see this huge structure just leaning precariously from behind the church. The ground under the tower is slanted sharply and they have actually had to replace a lot of the lower columns with stronger substances to withstand the unnatural weight of the building.

The tower and the the spectacular cathedral are pretty much the highlight of the town (we didn’t pay to go up the tower so we actually went into the back entrance of the cathedral so Jenn could pray/free way to see the inside) and once that was done we grabbed lunch and a gelato, strapped on our packs and headed over to the tower for one last picture with Helen this time. We wanted a picture of the three of us with our packs and ice cream and all of the tower. This is actually a tall order (no pun intended). As I am sure everyone has experienced, some people just don’t seem to understand that when you ask for a shot of you in front of a major monument…you kind of want the monument!

So we bided our time and chose as our mark – two women in their late twenties jabbering in English – perfect. The girl taking the picture was actually so committed to getting the shot right that she  kneeled down on the ground even though she was wearing pristine white pants – now that is commitment I can respect! The shot looked great, we reciprocated and got a great one of the two of them, and then hoofed it over to the bus stop so that we could catch the train to Florence.  As the sun beat down, Jenn acted as Helen’s human shade…I lost my camera case taking this shot because the bus pulled up just as I was taking it, I jumped up off of the stoop, hopped onto the bus, and then looked back to see my little black case waving goodbye to me from the sidewalk. At least I still have the camera, right!

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Reading: Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov – this man has no redeeming qualities at all and the novel is creepy…really well written, but creepy!

On My Faux-Pod: Dookie Album by Greenday

Where am I really? Slovenia – and it rained all day!