When H and I planned our month long trip through 4 European countries we booked all our accommodation and transportation in advance. We also planned all of this via skype while H was in Iceland and I was in Oregon. To say that our trip planning was a challenge is an understatement. Somehow though we managed to successful plan everything out for that entire month with only one small hiccup.
Pisa…
H and I left the beautiful Florence early in the morning and after a short train ride we arrived in Pisa. Since it was still quite early out many shops and attractions were not yet open. We did find one shop selling breakfast that quickly grabbed our attention with its massive nutella sign.
I miss nutella being considered an appropriate breakfast food! Of course while we were enjoying our nutella covered crepes a rain storm began that ended up lasting most of the day causing H and I to hide out from the rain on more than on occasion.
When the storm had finally passed enough for us to brave the outdoors we headed off to visit the famous leaning tower of Pisa. H and I made sure to take tons of photos posing with the tower before the area became too crowded with all the arriving tourists.
After our photoshoot with the leaning tower of Pisa we decided to purchase tickets to go on a tour of the tower. Even though it was early in the morning many tour tickets were already sold out so we had to wait a few hours before we could go on our tour. Lucky for us the weather cleared up for a bit so we were able to explore around the area where you find the leaning tower of Pisa.
The Piazza del Duomo (pictured above) in Pisa is just stunning! Unfortunately are stroll through the area was cut short by some crazy rain fall. By the time we had found a restaurant to sit down and wait out the rain H and I were completely soaked! I won’t lie, being wet and uncomfortable does not make for a fun day of travel. Nor does it help when you order food and it taste like a bad fast food version of Italian food (microwaved pasta, gross!).
With our stomachs not exactly full and are clothes still wet we ran back out into the rain to catch our tour of the leaning tower of Pisa. The tour takes you inside where you are told a quick history of the tower in the small area at the base of the tower. I was not listening much to what our guide was saying nor was I taking pictures because I was too busy trying to not think about how claustrophobic the small area was making me. Just to get an idea of how small this area was here is a photo I took standing at the bottom looking up the tower.
About 20 of us were huddled together in that tiny circle space! Needless to say I was so happy when our group headed up the stairs to the more open top level of the tower.
At the top of the tower you can see some great views of Pisa. It felt strange walking on a slant but at least I had the views to distract me from how high up we were. And they have a fence around the edges so you can feel nice and safe. (Joke, I was still terrified of how high up we were!)
If you ever visit Pisa I highly recommend taking a tour to the top of the tower. This ended up being my favorite part of the day, even if I was terrified and made my way back down the tower looking like this.
H just loves traveling with me:)
Here is where our planning fail came into play. When we were planning out our time in Pisa we didn’t really research much about the area and the different attractions we could visit. We wanted to be sure to give ourselves plenty of time in the area though so we booked our train ticket out of Pisa for 9pm giving us over 12 hours of time in Pisa. At the time this seemed like a great plan.
However when your completely soaked from all the rain and on week two of non-stop travel all you want to do is just be somewhere warm to relax. After our tour was over it was only about 1 in the afternoon and the though of having waiting around Pisa for another 8 hours in our wet clothes seemed just terrible. At the same time we were really trying to stick to our plan and not add extra transportation expenses.
An hour later we were on a train to Rome deciding that taking the money loss of our other tickets was well worth it to be out of our wet clothes. This also meant that we were arriving to our accommodation in Rome much earlier than planned and it caused a few extra bumps along the way but when your traveling you quickly learn to not stress the small stuff.
We were just so happy to be headed towards a warm room, we didn’t even care that we had the most annoying passengers ever riding behind us.
Next week is all about our adventures in Rome, yet another beautiful Italian city!
Question of the Day?
Have you had travel plans that didn’t go as planned?
