Our first view of the tower was kind of surreal. As you can see from the photos, it was a grey and rainy day in Pisa. Now some things, you can turn up to see, and be disappointed by them (like seeing the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park). Other things, they're bigger than you expect and you can't quite get your head around it (like the Grand Canyon). But this was just the right size.
Since it was raining, we spent most of our time in the cathedral. It had lots of seemingly random paintings around the walls, presumably of notable people of Pisa, but we only found one painting of Jesus (which was quite striking). They also had a few relics of body parts of various saints which was mildly disturbing!
We also visited the baptistry, which is a circular building with interesting acoustics, as demonstrated by a member of the staff. He sang three notes in succession, and the echo continued for so long that you could hear it as a chord.
Finally, I had - and took - the opportunity to climb the tower. Now this was weird. The tower is hollow inside, with double walls and the stairway winds up the outside between those walls. As you go up and around, the change in tilt is really noticeable, so one minute it feels you are going left, the next down, the next right, etc. To get to the very top the stairway is really narrow - with my arms by my sides I was touching both walls, so I'm sure some of the bigger people who I saw later wouldn't have made it through there.
Anyway it was kind of cool to say, I'm actually standing on the leaning tower of Pisa. And it was at that exact moment that the batteries in my camera died.
Back in Florence we relocated to another hotel - which turned out they had shifted us to a partner hotel across the square - but it was good to have a much quieter bed to sleep in!
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