It was longer than a long weekend, but less than a week, so where do you go (from Tirana, Albania) with $150 in WIZZ airline credit and $360 AirBNB credit? After eliminating NORTH (Austria, Belgium, too cold already), we settled on Pisa, since Kat has never seen THE Tower, and Pisa is just a 90 minute train ride from a place we have wanted to visit for years: Cinque Terre. First: Pisa.

It’s an easy 90 minute flight from Albania (even though we had to get up at 0300 to catch that early flight), the temps were about the same, even a few degrees WARMER, and the airfare was $55 USD round trip, per person. Regional flights almost anywhere outside the US are very reasonable, which makes mini vacations like this more practical. From the Pisa airport the Downtown (Centro) area was only about 15 minutes via a very novel carrier. It’s called the PisaMover, and it’s an automated shuttle like we find at distant airport terminals, but this one takes you directly to the regional train station and downtown. No need to hassle with a bus or taxi, and for 5€ we kept our bags there while we explored.

The Arno River divides the town and there are several bridges, all looking quite old and very Romanesque! Walking through the streets we had only one target, and when the top suddenly appeared, Kat exclaimed, “Oh my God, there it is!!” It’s pretty hard to miss since there’s not many buildings with a four degree (4°) lean, which doesn’t SOUND like much, but we are so used to living in a world of straight buildings, and any building—including a 185 foot (57 meter) building, stands out. And it truly does. The Tower initially was supposed to be almost 200 foot tall, but when the leaning became obvious, they modified the height. About 35 years ago the lean was even WORSE, about 5.5 degrees, but eight years of restoration and shoring (hopefully) stabilized it, leveling it about 15 inches, which is quite a bit. In time the famous Tower may tip over since the work that was done does not really “fix” the unstable soil.

We decided not to do the climb, but spent time exploring the other marvelous architecture in the Piazza dei Miracoli, including the Cathedral (Duomo di Pisa), the Baptistery (Battistero di San Giovanni), and the Monumental Cemetery (Camposanto Monumentale), and all are still pretty mind-blowing. There is no area in Italy with so many amazing structures cloistered together this close, and it’s beautiful in every way. We did NOT expect the crowds we found in mid-October, but between the attractions and the hordes of people, it was jamming. One of the options available was to walk the Wall surrounding the area, but with such a long day we pushed that back until we returned a few days later, prior to departure. At 11 meters (36’) high, the wall goes a LONG way, about four miles, but after three days of non-stop walking, I regrettably only did half. Even so, the almost 1000 year old wall is in amazing condition for a structure that was started in 1154, which is EXACTLY 800 years before I was born. Stuff like that, truly ancient things, really used to blow my mind, but after living in apartments that were 500 years old, and visiting ruins and monuments that were many thousands of years old, it all becomes part of life on the road.