PISA

I woke up again at 5:30 am and this was going to be one of my busiest days in the tour. I had travel from Rome to Pisa, Pisa to Florence and then Florence to Venice all in one day. I was to reach Venice at 9:30 in the night and I was a bit apprehensive about reaching the hotel from the train station. After the Rome experience I had realised that unless I have detailed block by block directions, it was impossible to reach any place even with the map. Since there was no internet facility in the hotel and I did not want to waste time looking for an internet cafe, I was relying on the tourist information center at Venice.

So I caught the train and reached Pisa in about three and half hours. I looked around and saw an office which said Client Assistance in Italian. They should at least have such help boards in bilingual. Anyhow, I went in there and was standing in the queue reading the posters. One in big red letters said NO TOURIST INFORMATION, NO BUS INFORMATION. I wondered what kind of assistance they offered. I wanted to deposit my luggage. I also saw a poster which gave directions for luggage deposit so thankfully I did not have hear that from them after standing in the queue. I deposited my backpack, bought a bus ticket to Pisa and stood at the bus stop.

There were three other men from India. They were gujjus and had come to Munich and Denmark on a meeting and had four days in between to tour Italy. I went with them till Pisa. They were quite helpful towards me and we looked for directions together. They were also going to Florence and then Venice same day like me. They took a nice picture of me with the leaning tower. On the bus I met another guy from Columbia. He had been touring Europe starting from London where his brother lived. He seemed disappointed to be traveling alone, said he does not like it. So I guess traveling alone is not such a popular idea.

At Pisa I bought a Eur 15 ticket to go up the tower which the gujjus did not so we parted ways as they went back to the station. Ticket was expensive but I wanted to get a feel of standing on the leaning tower and see how much tilted it feels. It was a long climb up without any lift. The weather was already very windy and a little drizzly. As I reached the top, I was taken aback by the tilt. The slope of the marble floor , boundary of just iron rods, strong winds and wet floor made it all a scary experience. I was scared even to walk around. Still to get a feel of the tilt I walked around the circumference a couple of times.

Then we went a floor up more to the top where the floor was just a narrow ring of marble. It was even more threatening and I stayed there for just 3-4 minutes. Took one round on the circumference and then came down and took a bus back to the station. I had a good view of the city of Pisa from the tower. It was a very small place with nothing but just the tower as the main attraction. It was so difficult to even reach the station. Here nobody understands the leaning tower, they call it 'Torre'. Similarly station is 'Stazione' and pronounced very differently. And when you ask someone they dont even say Yes but 'Si'. I reached the station just in time to catch the 1:30 pm train to Florence.