Pisa

Well what a day we had. We had relaxed so much in the Cinque Terre that we lost track of days and on what was meant to be our check out day, we spent at Monterosso al Mare relaxing and enjoying what we thought was our last day. Imagine our surprise when we returned to our accommodation to shower and get ready for a nice night out, only to discover a letter attached to our front door saying we were suppose to have checked out by 10am and our belongings were at the office. Because my phone had been off all day we had missed the many frantic calls and messages from our host. He was relieved that we were still alive.

Talk about embarrassing. Once we realised our mistake we managed to do a panicked packing of luggage on the alley steps while working out what trains to catch to our next stop in Pisa. Talk about a big mistake. There we were in our board shorts and beach attire, not feeling fresh at all, catching two trains to get to Pisa. Thankfully our accommodation at Pisa was a hotel and their reception was open until 10pm. We made it with about an hour to spare.

Once we got over our frazzled nerves (having discovered a few important items were still in our last accommodation and we needed to make the trip back the next day) we were able to truly appreciate the location of our accommodation for the night. We walked straight out of our building, looked left and there was the Leaning Tower of Pisa. AMAZING!!

We were able to wander down the cobblestone lane and explore the area around the tower without any crowds. It was us, a few other tourists, and some armed army personnel that guard the buildings. It was such a fabulous feeling. After a couple of night time shots we found a great restaurant and finally fully relaxed over a glass of delicious Italian wine and a plate of yummy pasta. We knew we would have a full day tomorrow having to return to Cinque Terre to collect the rest of our belongings to then get back to Pisa for Brad’s scheduled tower climb, but for the time being we got to relax and enjoy the evening.Read more