Pisa; seriously, just wow.

So having got my revenge on the scary hostel lady by waking her up really early to check out, jumped on the train to Pisa. Now, even without the Tower (which by the way is all the way on the other side of town from the train station, city planners in the 1100’s were so inconsiderate!) is just a really nice little town which manages to stay uncrowded even with so many people flocking there and again it was such a relief to just walk around without being crushed by the tourist throngs (yes I know I’m one of them) for a change.  Was just walking down a street wondering when this damn tower was finally going to put in an appearance when I looked up and was totally blown away. Of all the great things I’ve seen on this trip this was probably the first to literally stop me in my track…which was inconvenient as I was halfway across a street at the time.

Now obviously I expected it to be leaning but you don’t really comprehend til you actually get there just how far its leaning, especially when you look at its base. I wanted to run past every time I had to walk under it because it really looks like its about to topple over, and I really was having one of those days. Now personally if I was building a tower and it started falling over I would have started from scratch so its mostly just incredible that these guys 800ish years ago just decided to keep on going and hope for the best. Aside from that the piazza its in also has a stunningly beautiful church, a huge cavernous baptismal which one of the attendants was chanting in to create the most amazing sounding echoes a cemetery filled with frescoes and ornate funeral monuments and 2 museums showcasing the various artworks that were housed in the church over the centuries.

 Had a delicious pizza at a restaurant just down the street from the tower (ate very quickly and kept a close eye on the Tower just in case :S). Took a last wander around the piazza and marvelled at the tower a bit more and then beat a hasty retreat to the train station as there were some terrifying looking clouds on the horizon. Made my way to the campsite in the hills above Florence where I am currently enjoying a tasty glass of Italian wine while the sun goes down J