The second biggest highlight of my trip to Florence, right behind Ponte Vecchio, was my side trip to Pisa. Before leaving home, I stopped at Target to buy a diary to bring with me. I found one with the Leaning Tower of Pisa on it. I thought how much I would love going through this trip, writing in my diary and then getting to take a picture of it in front of the tower.
Pisa is another one of those places in Europe where you are just walking in what seems like any old neighborhood until you make a turn and all of a sudden, there is this world famous tower in front of you. There are gobs of tourists all over the place taking pictures of each other “holding up” the tower.
On my way back to the train, I stopped at a supermarket and got some cheese and olive bread for lunch. I ended up having a picnic of sorts in the pouring rain at the Pisa train station when my train back was cancelled. I had to wait an hour for the next one. It was freakishly freezing outside for May. When I first got to Florence, it was hot. But this day was so cold and I could not get warm even with jeans and a hoodie.
Pisa was incredible – it’s definitely a surreal complex in the middle of the town.
It was so weird, one minute I was in a supermarket, the next I was looking at the Tower. It really is in the middle of a town.
Can’t wait to visit Pisa one day! Looks amazing!
Before going to Pisa, we imagined the Tower to be huge, easy to locate… a bit like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But as we got there (by car), our navigation was kinda crazy and we just couldn’t find the Pisa Tower! When we finally saw it – well, we were actually driving past it and almost missed it! haha.. – we even hesitated for a second whether we should park the car and get closer to it! The thing is there were SO MANY tourists, it was cold and pouring rain! So our pics look like yours here: the monuments are beautiful of course, but the sky’s all grey, and we were (almost) happy as we left Pisa 😀
I almost WALKED past it! It was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I also pictured a huge Eiffel Tower-esque thing. Not for this world famous landmark to be hidden inside a normal city.