My first impression, walking through this town on the way to our hotel, is that it is at least better organized than Venice… and that has to be a plus. The streets are broad and have a visible length of more than fifty feet, there are cars and Polizia and… uh… army guys on the roads, and there are traffic control devices and open spaces and street signs to help you find your way. It’s a city with an infrastructure I can identify with — a little something that makes me more comfortable than playing “left right left right left right and see where we all end up” in Venice on a Saturday night.
My second impression is that there are an unusual number of Americans around the place. Come to think of it, if you aren’t an old lady and you aren’t wearing a fur coat and you aren’t smoking then you’re probably American. If you’re traveling in a group of more than two, you’re definitely American. You might not know it yet, but you are.
My third impression is… I don’t know. Florence is a beautiful city with some great things going for it: Michelangelo’s David, of course, whom I found to be oddly disproportionate (but hey, whatever, who am I to judge?); Perseus slaying Medusa and a glut of other fancy sculptures depicting great moments in mythological history; the Cathedral of Florence (Il Duomo, the fourth largest cathedral in the world, incredible); and, in a few words: even. more. stuff.
That's all touristy crap, of course, and you’ve heard it all before; which is why I think you’d prefer to see a giant rat paddling down the river Arno like some kind of disfigured sea otter. Seriously, it was two feet long. Shoddy camera work and commentary courtesy of Mike.
Posted by Chris Clark on March 8, 2005 at 8:57 AM
When people tell you to go somewhere to see a big tourist attraction but make a point of saying “don’t make it a day trip, there’s nothing there”, you tend to listen. Pisa was one of these, and one of the aforementioned ‘minor stops’ remaining in Italy (the other being Pompeii, before those plans were canceled). Thus we made plans to see it, but not spend too much time on it.
With travel time remaining on our Eurail passes, the whole affair was incredibly painless: hop onto a train (without the need to make a booking), hop off an hour and a half later, see the tower, look around for a few minutes, hop back on the train, head back to Florence. Only half a day gone and another Wonder Of The World™ under the belt: I call that efficiency. The tower is precisely what you would’ve expected: a little tower leaning on an angle. If it had never started to lean, Pisa would never have made it onto the map.
I made an official suggestion that they stop fortifying the foundation and just let it fall already, but I doubt anyone was listening. The risk of collapse would increase the value of the tower exponentially with every passing year it remains upright. Everybody would know that it’s gotta fall some time —and some time soon— so the thought of missing out would be too much to bear. Tourists would flood the country, eager to see a marvel of embarrassing engineering before its time is up. And just think how much money the t–shirt vendors could make with “I survived the Tower of Pisa’s collapse” swag. Honestly, you gotta know when to keep your landmarks standing and when to let them hit the ground; just look at what it’s done for New York and the World Trade Center.
What, too soon?
Posted by Chris Clark on March 8, 2005 at 8:58 AM