Day 19: Pisa - So hot we can't see straight

The girls and I stayed up pretty late last night playing Monopoly Deal, so it was nice to not have to get up super-early. We got our morning coffee fix and then it was out the door for a 9:50am train to Pisa. We arrived in Pisa at 11:10, and we thought it was pretty interesting that not many people got off the train. The train station was pretty empty, so I Googled "leaning tower of Pisa hours" to see if everyone else knew something we didn't. Google said that the Tower was closed on Mondays! But how can that be?....we had pre-purchased tickets for 1pm. We wandered around and found a couple of people that worked at the train station. I asked them if the Tower was closed on Mondays and they looked at me like I was a clueless tourist (ok, I clearly am a clueless tourist) and said, "no, no....it's open!"  I called the Tower (novel idea that I got in my head about 15 mins after the Google-scare) and the guy said, "Sì We're open!" Nice. I guess Google isn't always right. So, we walked a mile to a restaurant, had some pizza and calzones (surprise, surprise) and then made our way to the Tower.

We have stopped taking pictures of Italian food. Because, you know, most pizzas and calzones look the same. But beers...no! All different!

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is pretty remarkable. One, because it was built on a very unstable foundation (yet there are buildings still standing from centuries before the Tower was built, so it's not like they didn't know that you kind of needed a strong foundation to build a massive tower like this). Two, because they kept building it even though it started to lean during construction (they even made some of the upper floors taller on one side than the other to compensate for the lean!). Three, because it took almost 200 years to build (199 to be exact)!  They took almost 100 years off of building it due to some pesky wars that they were fighting at the time, and this was a good thing for the tower, since it gave the ground time to settle.  And four, because it's still standing today (due to a lot of engineering and stabilization). Today it leans almost 4°, but it actually got as far off as 5.5° in the early 1990s! Engineers have now stabilized it to where it's good to go for the next couple hundred years. This thing is far more stable than I am!

Of course, since there are steps, we had to climb up the Tower...

Well-worn steps...

Miniature Town - Pisa!

They didn't make this doorway for me.

We walked around and saw all the crazy tourists taking pictures of them holding up the tower or leaning against the tower. We are far above that kind of typical tourism.....

Ok, maybe not. We then went to the Cattedrale di Pisa, which is just a super fancy way of saying the Pisa Cathedral. This cathedral was built in 1092!! Almost 100 years before the tower, and the cathedral is not leaning. Can you imagine the engineers building the Tower? 

Engineer 1: Hey, I think it's the cathedral that's off, not us.
Engineer 2: Are you sure, bro?
Engineer 1: Yeah, gotta be the cathedral....we're good
Engineering Manager: Hey guys, I'm not paying you to talk...keep going, we have a budget and a timeline, and they won't accept anything less than 200 years!
Engineer 2: <mumbling>Ridiculous....who can build a tower in just two centuries?!

Anyway, back to the cattedrale - as with all of the cathedrals we've seen it is really beautiful. It is a Roman Catholic cathedral and has many wonderful pieces of art. 

The girls have been carrying two scarves each with them in their backpacks on this trip. They've had to cover their shoulders and knees in most churches.

We then headed to, of all places, McDonalds. Not to eat of course, but to get something to drink and cool off. The weather is still blistering hot here!  After we were sufficiently cool (well, I'm always sufficiently cool, but I respectfully had to wait for the others), we walked the mile back to the train station to catch our train back to Florence.  We grabbed dinner in Florence, got our usual gelato, and headed back to our place. One of our guides recently told us, "if you're not having three gelatos a day here, then you need to catch up!"  Looks like we need to catch up!  

Again, beer. Again, no food pics. Priorities, people.