I just spend the late morning and early afternoon in the town of Pisa, Italy. The train ride there was probably one of the best, only one other passenger in the cabin with me. I had decided earlier that an afternoon in Pisa would be enough to see the leaning tower, I decided this because so many people have told me that the tower was pretty much the only thing there. I’m glad that I took their advice. I got into Pisa about 11 and the way my mind works I’m always stressed over time. I mentioned something last summer about me being an hour earlier for the two-hour early that airports have. It’s just something about the way I think, and today I was all stressed with only four hours to do the sightseeing that I had planned. I rushed to drop off my backpack, fought for a map of the city, and almost ran to the tower. When I got there I was rewarded with probably the best thing I’ve seen this trip. It’s not only a beautiful building made out of white marble, it’s leaning almost to the point of being an optical illusion. There are other buildings there along with the tower, and they were just as beautiful. All buildings are in a square of sorts, complete with grass in the middle. It was an almost perfect location. I took dozens of pictures of all the buildings, the people walking around, and some of the statues that were scattered around the square. It was funny to see all the tourists doing the “holding up the tower” pose. Since I was traveling alone and the place was so packed with people there wasn’t anyway that I could set the camera up on a time to take my own picture, so I asked about five or six people to take my picture. Each did, but damn they weren’t very good photographers. Most either cut the tower off, put me right under the tower, or anyone of series of mistakes. Out of about twelve photographs that they took, only two were any good. I’m not complaining at all, actually I’m glad that I have so many photos of me standing in the front of the tower. One person even had me try to place my hand like I was holding the tower up.

I headed back to the train station as quickly as I left and I ended up being two hours early for my next train. Damn, two hours. So I walked around a little bit more, which killed another hour and then sat in the train station for the last hour. I’m on the train right now for Rome, should be there in about two and a half hours.