Tusseling with Toscana

We left Rome by train and arrived at Firenze SMN just in time to jump on a local track to take us to Pisa and its tower. The norm in Pisa is to get off the train, get on a bus, get to the tower, take The Picture, and move on. Neil and I made things interesting by walking through the town towards the sites. Pisa itself is very nice. The main street is full of little shops and restaurants and even with the over cast and slight drizzle everything was quite picturesque.

There are three interesting facts that Neil and I discovered about the Leaning Tower. First off, as true engineers, we were searching the grounds for the indepth explination of this design disaster. We wanted to know who got fired. Who didn't pay attention in their Soil Mechanics class? Who can we make fun of? Nothing. They had nothing about the actually cause of the tower's ridiculous lean (Which insidently is Ridiculous. You round a corner and see this beautiful piece of architecture peering out from behind the wall of buildings that lines the street and you can't help but laugh and go "Really?"). It felt like maybe they were trying to cover it up, hide the fact that the tower is actually a complete catastrophe by calling it a "marvel" and labeling it a "must see attraction". Turns out, its working. (I love it) This brings me to the next interesting fact. When you arrive in Pisa, and see the tower, and enjoy its ridiculousness, move on to the real fun; watching the Tourists. There seems to be an unspoken rule concerning this location that says "instead of caring what the rest of the world thinks about you, act like a complete fool". Neil and I spent close to an hour wandering the area and the most entertaining part was watching people try to line up their pose. "No left. Too Much! Back, back, Stop! Ah, man you had it. Okay, okay, not bad, now move your left hand down, back, no, no, you have to tilt your wrist out. Oh, geez, you totally had it. Alright, start again with your right had." " FOR HEAVEN SAKES!!! Shut up, why don't you just take the F&£king picture, is it that hard." (I love it) Its also fun to take pictures of the people lining up their shots. The entire area is full of tourists, young and old, trying their best to support the poor, pathetic, sagging tower. This now brings me to my final interesting fact about the Leaning Tower of Pisa (this is Pisa's pride and joy, and therefore they need to make all their money off the silly tourist that want their Leaning Tower of Pisa picture, so everything in Pisa is 4 times the price of everywhere else in the world. So you have the tower, as well as the most expensive post cards known to man). Everyone takes the same picture; I am huge, watch me hold up the tower (I love it). Neil and I didn't think twice about trying to crust the tower, punch it down, push it over and stop it to pieces. At one point a pair of English Gentlemen wandered by and said "Thomas, look, they're doing it wrong, should we tell them". (I love it) Pisa is worth the trip. It's amazing to see that this post card friendly gag actually exists, and it's worth the trip just to see how people act in unusual situations ("reality TV, without the TV").

When it rains in Florence it's comparable to Vancouver. Or Calgary, or basically any other place in the world, because everyone still hides under umbrellas and talks about how bad the rain is to one another. When it hails in Florence it is a completely different story. I think we brought the situation on our selves, when we lathered up with sunscreen. It had been nearing 30 degrees in the hot Tuscan sun, and 10 minutes later it was the end of the world. I had a rain jacket. But that really didn't mean anything when the sheets of water started falling from the heavens. We were finishing up a day of exploring the beautiful city when we made a fatal error NOT to go into the last museum. We were half way back to the hostel when the hail started hurting. At one point the main street where our accomodations lay had turned into a lake with floating cars and abandoned scouters (and things floating by that I care not to mention, the streets in Italy tend to gather Character throughout the day). Getting back to the hostel, in the perfect storm style weather, was the most fun I had had since the go-cart driving of Santorini. I thought it was out of control and I couldn't get enough of it. An hour later it was back up to 30 degrees and the water had dained away; it was back to post-card Florence.


We raced around for two days exploring the many museums of this artistic haven. I could try to discribe the experience of turing the corner in the Accademia and seeing Michelangelo's masterpiece, but at 21 feet, David is something that you have to see with your own eyes. (Oddly enough, the sculpture held a striking resemblence to myself. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but David appears to have been a pretty stand up guy, so...) It's funny to see, both women and men, spend so much time just staring up at David's sculpted buttock. People will just marvel at it. I heard several girls walking by saying "wow, he's a pretty good looking sculpture, that Michelangelo was good".

Tuscany is absolutely gorgeous. It's country side made the trip from Florence to Venice really interesting. It was definitely not the generic trip to Florence that many people experience, but between the fun in Pisa, and the down pour of the century, we really took advantage of the amazing museums, and the beautiful street of the red-roofed city. Tuscany gave us a run for our money, but we're still kicking, and loving Italy.