Day 32 Pisa

This morning after a late night frantic email, my ticket to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa came through, giving me 30mins to pack, dress and get to the tower. Yikes! Fortunately my hostel was a 3min walk to the tower so I made it with 5 mins to spare. I was first in the queue! When 9am hit they body scanned us and let us up. It is such an impressive sight from the outside. It is actually a hollow cylinder with a staircase winding around the outer wall to the top and a completely hollow centre. It is completely made of marble and is beautiful. I found the climb up, and noticeably more on the down, very disorienting due to the tilt & the uneven stairs. I finally made it to the first level (bloody ancient people & their stairs!) and the view was amazing. After walking around I though the guard was shepherding up to the exit (your time in the tower is timed) but it was another staircase! This one much skinnier and even more wonky and went to the top. Even more amazing views! We wandered around and checked out the big bells. I wondered to myself if they actually ring. A few minutes later an announcement came on and it was a warning that the bells would ring at the end of the message. I made my way to the middle of the bells & got ready to film. I was wondering how loud they would be.....I shit myself when they started! Holy moly they were loud & I jumped a mile! It was pretty awesome though being surrounded by 7 ringing bells.

After I took some more photos I headed down, slowly. It's so weird because on one half of the spiral you are tilted inwards, then you go half a turn around the tower and you are tilted outwards. By the time I got to the bottom my legs were shaking!

I went back to my hostel to collect my backpack and went out walking the streets. I had no plans, I just wandered aimlessly. I checked out the cannabis shop where they sell cannabis chocolate, lollypops, cookies, drinks & smoking cannabis. It has 0.2% THC so it doesn't give you a high apparently. I did NOT buy anything in case you were wondering. My 100% illicit drug free status is intact! I walked along the shopping strip for a while, went back to the tower for more photos then found a restaurant for lunch. I had a steak as apparently they are famous. It was not too bad but gave me a protein boost which I was severely lacking.

After lunch I collected my luggage then made my way back to the train station, stopping along the way to pick up a jar of truffle cream.

I got the train to Rome in the afternoon which is where I will spend the next few days.