Misadventures in Sicily: Pisa

On Boxing Day my host dad and I went to Pisa, as he had some friends vactioning there, and I wanted to see the tower. After getting lost a little, and asking several people for directions, we found a parking space. Between the parking spot and the tower, we were asked if we wanted a "real" Prada purse, for less than €50, that some guys were selling off of tarps they'd put on the sidewalk. Seeing as neither my host dad, nor I were interested in a purse, we continued on. My first impression of the tower was that it was kinda small in comparison to the cathedral and baptistery, though that might have been because I was standing at the far end of the field.

From outside the wall

See, look at how small the tower is in the background.

So, pretty much this is the same set up as in Florence, you've got your baptistery (round building), cathedral (similar shape to Florence, though without the huge dome), and the bell tower (the one in Florence doesn't lean like this one). We couldn't go inside the cathedral because there was a mass going on, and we couldn't go up the tower because we had to head back in time for lunch, but I did manage to get some photos from the ouside. Including...

I felt silly. This photo is especially funny because of the amount of time we had to wait for a space to clear (as apparently Dec 26 is a popular day for tourists), and the amount of times my host dad tried to clear a space by shouting "Scusi!!" at the other tourists.

Not so many people on the other side, but the lighting was not as nice.

I felt really silly.

The cathedral, like many other things in Italy, is really really old, construction starting in 1064*. The tower was started in 1173, and by the third floor was starting to lean. When construction restarted they started making one side of the floors taller than the other to compensate for the lean. When it was finished the lean was 1%, this eventually increased to %5.5, before additional stabilizing reduced it to 4%.