The day began with a short walk up the road to the Accademia. Having a pre-booked time (9:30am) meant we went straight to the front of the already 90 minute queue. Once in we went straight to the main event – David.
We checked out a few of the other rooms, but with a train to catch we couldn’t spend much time here. Unfortunately we had trouble finding the exit, so we wasted about 10 minutes trying to get out.
We rushed to the train station, and then had to figure out where and how to buy tickets to Pisa. Then the train was due to leave from an obscure platform number, and we wasted precious minutes trying to locate it, and then running around the wrong way. We finally made it to the train, just as the doors closed in our face and it left without us.
The next train was another half hour wait, and of course it was delayed, so by the time we finally got to Pisa we only had just enough time to walk in the hot sun to the square, check our bags and get in line for our designated time of 1pm to climb the tower.
The tower itself is hollow. I don’t know what I was expecting but standing in the interior at the bottom you see the top like a fat chimney. The climb itself is not too strenuous, but by this time stairs were nothing to us. It was interesting though how you could tell something was amiss – it felt subtlety like you were drunk as the stairs sloped differently depending on which side you were on, the downside or the upside.
The view from the top is ok, nothing particularly great. The climb I think is mostly just to say you did it.
The Leaning Tower is a bell tower, and there’s a man at the top whose sole job is to yell at people who touch the bells. In the centre is a glass cover you can look down and see the bottom of the inside of the tower.
Down below we could see people doing the Leaning Tower pose.
Down below we took the obligatory “holding up the tower” photos, then treked back to the station, grabbing some gelato on the way.
Next stop was half an hour along the line to Lucca. Here we hired bikes and had a pleasant ride around the city walls. It was getting on so after returning our bikes we had a quick snack of pizza.
The journey back to Florence took 2 hours instead of the scheduled 1, so it was getting late by the time we got back, so we found a place for dinner and got home around 10pm.
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