Pisa, Monaco, Lyon, Avignon, and Paris......that's 5 more (well, 4-6 depends on how I wanna combine some of the cities) posts. I hope I can finish this before I leave for NY.
Pisa is actually not a big town. within the ancient city wall, there are only several buildings. Of course there are more outside of the wall, but those were not what Pisa is known for. The thing Pisa is known for is, of course, the leaning tower.
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| The entrance of the city (within the wall) |
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| They have interesting vendor shops. |
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| The gate |
We entered the city pretty early, so there weren't many tourists at that point. However, the first thing people do when they see the tower is to pretend they are holding the tower......
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And there it is! The Duomo (the baptistery, the church, and the dome).
The tower is the clock tower of the church. |
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Interesting how they have different colors
for the roof. |
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| The church. |
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| And the compilation of picture of holding tower begins. |
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The gentle hold. Not sure what's going on with this
guy's shirt...... |
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| The upside down hold. |
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| The "my leg is stronger" hold. |
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| The "trying very hard" hold. |
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| The "team work" hold. |
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| The "I'm fat but I'm capable" hold. |
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| And of course my failed attempt. |
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| The magnificent tower. |
The history of the tower is simple: They built this tower using marble because marble is beautiful, but they did not realize that the ground is not solid enough to support all the weight from the tower, thus the tower started sinking on one side. There were multiple effort to restore the uprightness of the tower, but all failed or not doing much. The most deviation it was from the center was 5.5 degrees. Now they actually found a way to make it upright again. instead of sticking bunch of metal bars under the sinking side to lift it up, they decided to drill the other side to make other side sink as well. Yes, they can actually make it straight, but, come on, why would you do that since it's been famous being slanted? They managed to make it sink enough to form a 4 degree angle.
They try to control the weight added by people by charging for the entry (duh! and it's hella expensive!) and restrict the number of people on top at an instance. Like I said earlier, we arrived early, so the line for getting up the tower wasn't long. Therefore we all went up!
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| It's slanted enough to see in naked eyes. |
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| Inside the tower, looking up. |
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| Description, and I don't know that person. |
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Climbing......I do a lot of climbing on this trip......
and sorry for the bad picture. |
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| Seeing the church from top of the tower. |
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| Top is guarded by fence. |
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Remember it's a bell tower? There are actually more
than one bell. |
One famous person is associated with the tower: Galileo. He dropped some shit down the tower and proved that the speed and time it takes to reach the bottom is independent with the mass of the object. It was so historical and revolutionary for the field of physics, even the field of......world! It's such an honor standing at the same spot as him where he dropped those objects.
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| View of the city outside the wall from the tower. |
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| More and more tourists showed up. |
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| The spiral stairs, pretty hard to climb. |
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| It's an honor being at the spot shit was dropped. |
Throughout this trip, I got to relive the same experience great people have lived, real or imaginative. Whether it's Galileo, Mozart, or even Ezio. I guess this is my biggest gain from this trip.
I'm gonna end this post here. Short, I know, but I guess it's good enough to finish the trip in Italy. Definitely visiting again!
Next stop: Monte Carlo, Monaco.
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