You know what feels more productive than working today?
Updating my blog about our trip to Europe last summer. Because I never finished
writing about some of the best parts! Plus now Pinterest lets you
pin things toa map, which is super cool. So, thus I start the first installment of
Europe 2012: The forgotten blog posts.
*******
How iconic is the leaning tower of Pisa, when you think
about traveling the world? To me, it’s one of my first memories of thinking “I
want to see that.” I was probably in middle school I guess? I remember being
fascinated by the story that Galileo dropped cannon balls off the side of it to
prove gravity worked evenly on everything. You
mean to tell me that something Galileo stood on is still standing (though
tilted) today??
[The train ride from Rome was fine, except that the train
car we chose didn’t have a working bathroom and I forgot to “go before we left.”
My mother’s words haunted me for the last thirty minutes as I did everything
short of dancing around the car to not wet myself. That might have been the
most uncomfortable half-hour of my life, despite the comfy chairs and beautiful
Italian countryside rolling by. To make matters worse, you had to PAY FOR the
bathrooms in the Pisa train station (not uncommon in Europe, mind you) and I
didn’t have any change. When I finally did get some change, I wound up hurriedly
dropping my dime into the turnstile for — and then walking into — the MEN’S
BATHROOM. Luckily the two restrooms were connected by a custodian’s closet,
which was miraculously open, and the poor custodian cleaning the bathrooms —
who spoke little, if any, English — frantically waved me through. Talk about a
comedy of errors.]
So. Pisa. Yes.
The bus to the tower is just a normal city bus, so we had to
figure that out. The herd of dazed tourists wandering from the station helped.
We rode this crazily-driven bus through the tiny city (luckily with EMPTY
bladders), trying not to fall on each other, until finally the driver yelled a
few Italian words and we all decided that this must be the stop, even though there was
no tower and no signs suggesting a tower.
So we walked. And walked a little more. I feel like it was at
least a mile. B can attest that I’m a terrible judge of distance, but I
distinctly remember wondering if we would ever see this tower.
We did, of course, and it was SO. COOL. The tower’s white façade
against that day’s clear, blue skies was breathtaking, and it looked just like
the photos! It was like seeing a celebrity on the street. I’d seen this tower
so often in photos it had become like a myth. Seeing it in person, examining
the foundation, realizing that a 4-degree tilt really does matter when
something is 180 feet tall… it was just awesome.
And then we took silly photos. :D
