Last Wednesday, on our way from Florence to Cinque Terre, we stopped in Pisa for two hours. Seeing the Leaning Tower was a must for Brent. After walking 20 minutes from the train station, we came upon that iconic tower. I was surprised by how "short" it was. I mean, it's tall enough... 7 stories or 183 feet... but not grandiose-looking in height. What is impressive is: the ENTIRE thing, even the steps, is made of beautiful, shiny, white marble; and climbing it is a completely unique experience.
We climbed the one and only spiral staircase. It has 294 steps. I noticed early on that my equilibrium was off due to the lean. I had to hold onto the side. At the top, we were able to climb out on three different terraces. The first is the one with all the columns. It has no fence, so they've put a net around it (how did they once walk up there?). The second is the bell tower portion. It has a 2-foot tall fence, but is mostly exposed so it was a little scary being close to the edge. The third and highest terrace was the tip top. You have to climb a short, very narrow spiral staircase to reach it. It was nerve-racking up there!! It was windy and the thing is LEANING by 12 feet!! I was stupid enough to wear a hat. Brent almost dove after some guy's hat that fell off. Needless to say, we didn't stay long up there. We look pretty nervous in the photo we took. :) But check out our funny, obligatory tourist shots of us leaning/dragging/kicking the tower: melissabartophotos.shutterfly.com.
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