Day 6

While in Florence, I scoped out our arrival in Pisa to figure out what buses we would need.  Google Maps had the public transport for Pisa and it made a nice little route for us, including telling us to walk 71 meters this way, then 62 meters that way.  Taking public transport saves a lot of money over taking taxis, so we’ve only used a taxi once as a last resort when I was too tired to deal with the buses.  In Florence, I had saved our Pisa directions as a PDF and copied the file to my phone so that I would have a handheld guide.  When we got off our city bus in Pisa, it took us a little while to find our hotel, Santa Croce in Fossabanda.  All the streets on my Google directions PDF were not named, but we eventually found it.  Our hotel here is a converted monastery, and the rooms were very basic, except when you step into the bathrooms and land in this century.

We rented bikes from the hotel to cruise around the city because it was a decent walk to get to the main attractions of Pisa.  Renting the bikes was a good idea and we got to see more of the city that way.  The lawn near the leaning tower is called the best lawn in Italy and they apparently have city ordinances protecting it.  Policemen shooed off people who ventured onto the grass.  Oddly enough, in late afternoon the police must be on siesta and people went on the grass.  When we arrived there, there were absolutely hordes of people everywhere.  Everyone was trying to get their goofy tourist shots of holding up the tower.  We probably took more than our fair share.  We got tickets to climb the tower and though I balked at the 15 Euro price, I was glad we did it.  It was a cool experience.  It was interesting to see the big wear in the middle of the marble steps, all 620 of them on the way to the top.  At the top, you really get a feel for just how much the tower leans and some of the people were a little freaked out by it.  We did some shopping at nearby stands before heading back to our hotel on our bikes.  We stopped at a little kebab shop.  Eating in Italy, we more or less just follow our stomachs and noses, picking a few of the many shops as we go.