One Night in Pisa

Our short time in Pisa was really fun and I'm a little sorry I didn't schedule two nights there. I had visited for longer before, and Sarah doesn't need as long as I do in each place, so I opted for one night.

We arrived in the early afternoon yesterday. Sarah was especially excited to see Pisa and I was also looking forward to revisiting and re-photographing all that good architecture. And we both had a great time.

Our hotel was just OK — good decor and friendly people, but sheets that felt scratchy and weirdly damp.

But, importantly, it had a great location - less than 10 minutes' walk from the "Field of Miracles" with its magnificent monuments. For an overview of those, I'll go ahead and plagiarize my own blog post from our visit in May 2008:

Laid out on the pancake-flat Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) is one of the most beautiful and interesting cathedrals in Italy, a lovely round baptistery to match, a separate belltower (the Leaning Tower), and the Camposanto, a rectangular marble courtyard once covered in frescoes and used for noble burials. These buildings, made of gleaming white marble and stretched out across a roomy green lawn, make such a beautiful sight.

After arriving we spent a couple hours in the cathedral and the Camposanto, had a nice pizza lunch, then climbed the Leaning Tower.

It rained on and off during the afternoon, but was really pouring rain by the time of the tower climb - we got pretty soaked up there on the top! But it was still totally worth it, of course. And the climb seemed downright short after the Bologna tower.

Happily, the rain stopped in time for me to take some photos at the coveted "blue hour." Less happily, when I got there with my tripod, I discovered I had left the ball-head, which is actually necessary to use the tripod, back in the hotel room. Argh!! It is really inconvenient to be an idiot.

The nice light was fading fast, so Sarah watched the tripod while I sprinted all the way back to the hotel and back as fast as I could. Thankfully I made it just in time, huffing and puffing and a sweaty mess. But suffering is temporary — photos last forever! I don't know that the results are award-winners, but I would have been very sad to have missed the opportunity.

Then we had some really good gelato and decided that would do for dinner. I stayed up too late doing the Bologna blog post and answering work e-mails, but slept well in the weird sheets. It rained hard for most of the night, with one big thunder clap.

Day 2

The weather this morning was surprisingly good - it started off cloudy but got sunnier and sunnier as the morning went on. It was extremely windy, though - just about knocked us off our feet sometimes!

We finished up our visiting and photographing duties at the Camposanto, baptistery, and cathedral, really enjoying the beautiful weather, and before I knew it, it was 11:30 and time to check out and get to the train station. Boo!

But we both mostly accomplished what we came for, and there are other great things to see elsewhere. Here's a small selection of the gazillion photos we took in Pisa.

Pizza (first things first).