This? This is nothing!
Trip Start
May 16, 2006
1
9
33
Trip End
Jun 13, 2006
Pisa,
Italy
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Saw a couple of things we missed the first time, such as the inside of the cathedral and a cute little unnamed restaurant on the third level of the village. After I got back, Sarah and I began the process of washing all of our laundry, which was surprisingly fast since we only had about half of a load apiece. Like Mexico, Italy does not have very many laundromats, so we were taking advantage of one when we had it. Most towns seem, instead, to have the equivalent of dry cleaners, which will wash your clothes for you at an exorbitant price per item.
After laundry, we caught the train to Pisa. We'd grabbed some "pizza" first, as train food is not worth mention. Sarah's ended up being bread and tomatoes, and mine was cheese and bread. No sauce anywhere. It wasn't bad, just odd. Getting to Pisa was easy, then we caught line one, which goes through town to the Campo dei Miracoli where the tower is located. The Leaning Tower is actually the campanile (bell tower) of the cathedral.
In addition, there is a baptistry, the cathedral itself, and the camposanto (cemetery). The latter was supposedly made from the soil from Golgotha that Crusaders brought back. Everything was ornate and intricate from the outside, but since we paid so much to climb the tower - 15E ($20), we didn't see the interiors of anything else. One weird item was that the roof of the baptistry was only tiled halfway. I'm sure there's an explanation for that, but it was in none of the literature they gave us.
We had to wait 45 minutes or so to be in the next hourly group to climb, so spent the time wandering and taking pictures of the mosaics and carvings on the other buildings. When it came time, we were glad we'd actually read the directions and checked our bags, since about 30% of the people were kicked out of line for not doing so. Climbing the tower seemed dangerous mostly because of the incredible gloss on the marble steps, and the foot-shaped indentions that people had worn into it over the past eight hundred plus years. We stopped twice to take pictures (and let some folks breathe), one of those times to let the people from the upper levels down, since the stairs became too narrow for more than one person at a time. I tried to keep count of the steps, but the breaks were distracting and I lost count around 283. We hung out at the top with the seven huge bells for awhile and took pictures of the scenery and the other tourists (at request).
When it came time to start back down, I'd hit about "14..." in my recount when I heard Sarah, who was directly above me, slip. I immediately braced myself on the walls and tried to get out of the way, for, kind gesture or not, there's no way I'm going to manage to stop anybody larger than your average eight year old. Since she'd fallen back, rather than out, she stopped herself just fine, if painfully. It was amazing how slowly our group inched down after that.
When we were safely on the ground and out of the way, she showed me the marble burn on her arm. I pointed out that it might sting, but at least she could say she hurt herself falling down the Tower of Pisa, and that sounded a lot cooler than slipping on gravel in the driveway or something, and she concurred. My final count was 296 steps down. We also agreed that compared to climbing the Mayan ruins last summer, or even the previous days stair workout at Riomaggiore, the Tower was nothing.
On the way back to the train station, I got a picture of a sign advertising "Jeffrey Swann in concert." This fellow was taught by his mother, Gloria Swann, before he went to Juilliard, who also happened to be one of my piano teachers.
For our last night in Riomaggiore, we ate at the tiny, nameless cafe I'd found earlier, and it was excellent. The nameless places always are.
(Pictures forthcoming.)
ETA: Pictures now up, sample here, rest at Flickr.
