Once on the train we had about an hour long trip to Pisa where we saw the famous leaning tower(which is actually a bell tower, I never knew that) and the cathedral that goes along with it.
We wandered around and took goofy pictures for a while before we got the real experience. You see, they still let people climb it and explore all around the top. The hallway around the inside is narrow and gets narrower as you get closer to the top, but that wasn't the weirdest part. It's a super weird sensation to be climbing a spiral staircase and to feel your angle change the further you climb. At one point the wall to your right will be pushing into you and in a few steps the whole building will shift to the left. I should probably also mention that the ancient stone steps we took to the top were worn down in the middle at least 3 or 4 inches, so not only were the walls "moving", but you couldn't decide were to place your feet either!
It took a good 5 or 6 minutes to climb to the "top", and by the time we made it up 8 stories, the wind had picked up into full blown gusts. That day I just happened to be wearing my longest, flowy-est, billowiest skirt. Bad news bears. I held on to my camera with one hand and my skirt with the other so Marilyn Monroe could keep the skirt blowing award. The views from up there were great, and I tried to just soak it all in.
After we got all the heights and sights we could take, we caught the next train to Lucca were we visited the home of Giacomo Puccini, who was the composer of many a great opera. After visiting his apartment, we tasted our first Italian hot chocolate before we crowded onto our last train of the day that would take us back to Florence.
I did not realize they opened the stairs in the leaning tower again. That is such an exciting experience, even without the wind-blown skirt. I dropped my pocket knife from about half way up, when I got back down I found it in the grass and discovered my knife left a circular mark on the face of the stone, my own permanant mark on history... lol
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