Next stop Pisa!
We left our ‘palace’ and walked our bags to our car. It was much easier to walk than drive the car in again in case we met another resident or our army friends again.
We put Pisa into the GPS and we were on our way. Shelly and Eddie decided to come to Pisa too to see the tower.
The GPS took us through the beautiful countryside, little towns and windy, tight roads. Passing trucks was quite terrifying!!!
We thought we’d be traveling on a freeway so we were a bit worried we’d put the wrong thing into the GPS. But it was ok. We made it to Pisa.
We were meeting Shelly and Eddie at the tower so we thought we would go straight to the hotel. Unfortunately the street was blocked with workers and it was a one way street. So we decided to take the car back first and then catch a taxi to the hotel. At this point we were worried we’d miss saying our goodbyes to Shelly and Eddie.
It was a very smooth process and we were at Hotel Bologna in no time. In hindsight this is what we should have done.
After checking in and leaving our luggage in the room we hurried to the tower to meet Shelly and Eddie.
We thought they would beat us but parking was a bit tricky for them.
Thankfully they made it and we could say our goodbyes which we always find very hard!
The famous Leaning Tower of Pisa was definitely something worth seeing. It looked a lot smaller than I thought it would be.
We had some lunch – more pasta for me!
We booked a ticket to go up the tower the next day and then went to wander through Pisa.
The main strip of shops were like walking through Pitt Street Mall.
There was one you wouldn’t see in the Pitt Street Mall it was the Cannabis shop where you could buy an interesting selection of goodies containing the green stuff, like lollipops, lollies and biscuits.
There were also lots of lane ways.
We’d been wanting to try some of the local salami and cheese so we found a small bar and did just that. We also had some nice local wine.
We were hot and tired so went back to our room to freshen up for dinner.
For dinner we found a very nice restaurant by following some ladies that looked like they knew where they were going. The restaurant was called Tora Tora.
We were lucky to get a table. The waitress brought a table from inside for us. She told us later that she liked to give good service for all customers whether they were foreigners or locals.
The meal we had was delicious! More pasta to start and another beautiful seafood platter! Bream, scampi, prawns and big octopus legs. It all tasted so yummy!
I’ll definitely be trying to find some recipes for cooking Italian seafood when we get home.
And we had another lovely local wine.
We only had one night in Pisa so we packed our bags and had the hotel look after them and headed back to the tower.
After some breakfast and coffees we went to climb the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Steve’s knee was playing up so I ended up going on my own.
The climb wasn’t too hard. There were only 269 steps. Easy compared to 588 steps we walked in Santorini and there weren’t any donkeys, poo and it was lovely and cool.
There are 5 flights of different stairs to get to the top of the tower.
Some are just a few steps to access the various parts of the tower and two of them are full size spiral staircases.
When I was walking on the leaning side it felt like I was going up and down and being pushed to the side. It was weird how it kept changing.
The view was amazing from the top.
Along with the view up through the tower and the bells.
Steve took a photo of me when I was up the top and I took one of him.
After the tower we had a quick look in the cathedral which of course was beautiful inside and out.
Next we went for a horse and cart ride. It was 20 minutes and a nice way to see the town. The driver who gave the tour only spoke Italian! So the only things we really picked up were the ages of the buildings! All of the horses looked like they were well cared for otherwise I probably wouldn’t have gone.
There was a sign on the horse saying not to touch but my Italian is not so good. 😜
After that we headed back to the hotel to collect our bags and made our way to the train station to go to Monterosso.
We had a bit of a wait so decided to have lunch. We found a Maccas! As the sign says there was also a bar!
We did the Big Mac test to see if it tasted the same as an Aussie one and of course it did! We had one with bacon but the rest of it tasted the same.
From there we went to the platform and waited for the train. Getting on the train was difficult with two heavy bags. We were in 1st Class so we had a spot to put our bags.
The trip to Monterosso was about an hour.
We jumped up a little early for the stop so had to wait in the gangway for one stop. We met an Italian guy who was helping us learn to pronounce Italian like an Italian.
I’ve tried very hard to learn the lingo but I’m failing. 🤣 I think we have to come back again to practice some more.