A Leaning Tower, a Lunch Lost: An evening in Pisa

We have four days left in Tuscany. Time to be tourists! As our flights draw near and the weather gets hotter I find myself feeling less of a need to always speak Italian within our family while in public or always wear pants and nice looking shoes. The shorts have returned, as have the flip-flops. We’ve even been visiting stores on the main drag and buying some of the typical tourist gifts for family back home.

        

      Last night we’d planned on going to see the Torre Pendente in Pisa. It seemed to make sense, being one of the most iconic structures in the country and sprouting out of the ground only a short train ride away. There was nothing to stop us. We’d spent some time earlier in the day riding around town, saying goodbye to a friend and packing. After our friend left Niko’s energy finally ran out. Within twenty minutes he was asleep on the couch. This is not normal for the little guy; he gave up naps months ago, so we thought we should hold off on waking him. The train we’d hoped to take was to leave in twenty minutes so I finally decided to rouse our slumbering five year old, but he resisted all attempts. We could wait another half hour, but that would be the latest train we could take, so we sat tight and he indeed was chipper and ready to go see the tower when we woke him. 

I’m sure you see where this is going, so I’ll cut to the chase. He felt worse and worse as we got to the station, I carried him all the way to the tower, he complained more, then finally, to everyone’s great relief, he lost his lunch while Lauren held him and tried to get him to a trash can and I stared down onlookers in the sea of tourists who were looking in disgust at the proceedings. That was that, though, and the little guy soon recovered, running around. It wasn't looking at the Leaning Tower and getting vertigo from the tilt that caused Niko's stomach to squeeze, but whatever bug it was seemed to have had the worst with him and set him free. He asked about the pictures we'd planned to take.

         That was the big deal, after all, this most touristy of things to do, and I was excited to get some shots of us contributing to the Tower’s demise or bravely holding it up if for only a few more seconds.

 

         So we posed and re-posed, realized that it was a bit harder than it seemed to get everything in alignment, but got our photos and marveled at the beautiful grass fields and the baptistery, cathedral, and tower (it was most entertaining seeing so many people from all over the world posing in various postures with the Tower as prop, too!).

         We rode our bikes back from the train station in good spirits and got back home before eleven and all found it hard to sleep until midnight, abuzz with all of the day’s new sights and experiences. 

In three days we’ll be headed down to Rome for our flight, which takes us to Zurich then Boston. What more sabbatical adventures will there be in seventy-two hours? Perhaps I shall recount some in my last post,  which should appear before month’s end.