Popping over to Pisa

Pisa is less than an hour train ride from Florence, travelling the infamous Trenitalia. We had done some research on the quickest and cheapest way to get to Pisa. We even went to the nearest train station to check on the ticket machine to confirm. All signs pointed to buying the tickets prior to boarding. So we woke early and walked to the main central station to find that the tickets for some reason had doubled in price. For a moment, it felt like we were on the Amazing Race and needed to board the train in less than 7 minutes. This was after getting lost on the way to the station, eating up our time buffer. Tasks were divided up: Ricky books tickets online and Jason checks the platform number. With 3 minutes to departure, we boarded the train en route to Pisa.

We had heard that Pisa wasn't worth a long visit, but we were pleasantly surprised. We couldn't visit Italy and not visit the nation's most famous monument: the Tower of Pisa. Having left before the crack of dawn, a strategy that Jason seems to be implementing on a more frequent basis, got us to the learning tower before hordes of tourists descended upon the monument. Our expectations were not high. In fact, we had read that the lean had been slightly corrected. So we were expecting a slightly leaning Tower of Pisa. But the Tower did not disappoint. It has hard not to think of all the history behind the tower, particularly Galileo’s experiment that disproved the ancient theories of gravity. And of course, there's the opportunity to take a cliché picture leaning on the leaning Tower of Pisa or trying to push it over.

But the amazing race did not stop there.

Next stop: Cinque Terre.Read more