Tuscany Day 5: Pisa!!

On Thursday we woke up to an partly cloudy sky...it wasn't raining though and it looked like the sun was trying to peek out so we decided we better go to Pisa. Obviously everyone goes to Pisa to see the leaning tower and if you're going to see it, you're going to want to take pictures. And if you're going to take pictures, it might as well NOT be raining. So we scraped Siena from our plans completely, and went to Pisa.
We planned on following Rick Steves advice...driving to a parking lot, paying to park and walking to the tower. However driving in Pisa was a NIGHTMARE and we ended up following parking signs only to get "lost" near the field of Miracles. We parked on a side street where the curb wasn't painted. (typically white lines means free parking, blue means pay and yellow means 'dont even think about it'). So we chanced it and parked. We walked not even 500 feet and BAM!

We were there. 

Now to be completely honest (which since this blog serves as a journal and baby book of sorts, I don't usual censor) I have to say that Pisa was not what I expected. It was VERY touristy. And I don't been that it was crowded (which is was) but on the other side of the Field of Miracles is every single cheap and tacky souvenir stand you could possibly imagine. Kinda took away from the magic of it all. During our visit, the grass was blocked off so you couldn't walk on it at all. That took away from some of the picture opportunities that I had had in mind (ie, stepping on the tower).  But it still is amazing to see this tower, literally leaning!

We had the option of climbing the tower which I was interested in doing. It was €15 per person and you had to be at least 7 years old. The problem was it was about noon when we got there and the first available time to climb was 3:40pm. I didn't want to climb it that bad! So we did what everyone did and took an obscene amount of photos...

Then on to the silly ones...

Me holding it up..

The boys kicking it down!

And while I didn't get the angle I wanted of me stepping on it, I did get a picture of me kicking it too:

After about 15 minutes of picture taking, there isn't a whole lot else in Pisa that one ''has to do''. We all went to a trattoria and grabbed lunch (nothing like 13 Americans to seat...that made our waiter quite noticeably annoyed). We grabbed gelato afterward then headed back to the Villa. 

Arrividerci Pisa!