every few weeks, my school plans a trip for us study abroad students to visit some of the cities surrounding Florence. this past weekend, we got a chance to visit Pisa and Lucca. I’ve never had much of an interest in going to Pisa before because it seemed so touristy but I was pleasantly surprised. the church and baptistry were beautiful and the tower was actually quite interesting and impressive. I learned that the tower wasn’t poorly designed but rather the ground beneath it was marshy clay so it was unstable from the start. about 10 years ago, it was leaning so bad that scientists came in and pumped out the water under the tower which reduced some of the lean and made it stable enough for tourists to go in today. I wanted to go to the top but it cost 18€ so I opted to look on from afar instead.

besides the interesting tidbits about the tower, it was entertaining to watch people take the typical leaning tower pictures. we had a blast taking our pictures and found the best way was to balance on the concrete posts to get a better angle, which led to a lot of fun balancing poses, as seen below. the city was quite small and typical of small Italian towns but we had some yummy pizza and a Pisa specialty called cecina, which was exactly like same as socca, a dish I loved while living in Nice, France. here are a few photos I took during my time in Pisa.