Climbing up the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

Our next stop from Florence was Cinque Terra. En-route to Cinque we decided to spend a couple of hours at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

Pisa is about an hour’s train ride from Florence, mid-way between Florence and Cinque Terre. The main attraction in Pisa is the Square of Miracles housing the Cathedral, Baptistery & the wonder of the world, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Every cathedral has a baptistery, the main cathedral and a bell tower. In this case when they constructed the bell tower, it started leaning and hence became a wonder of the world. Pisa is a small town and the trip to the tower, up the 250+ steps to the top most part of the tower and back in a matter of a couple of hours.

To climb the Pisa tower, you need to book tickets online on the Pisa website or other sites like GetYourGuide.com etc and pick a slot when you would be climbing. There are long queues to buy tickets at the sight and hence an online reservation is highly recommended since slots get filled out. We took a 7:30 am train from Florence, got to Pisa at around 8:30 am. After depositing our luggage at the Pisa Centrale Left Luggages spot at 5€ for the day, we set off to catch the bus from the station to the tower. That’s when we found out that since it was May 1st (Labour day) the town was like a ghost town – all shops shut, no buses on the road.. everything at a standstill. #facepalm.

The Baptistery

We didn’t have a choice but to walk the 2 km stretch to the tower. We had a 11 am slot to climb up and spent about an hour clicking a lot of photos “holding the tower” and visiting the cathedral and baptistery. The visit to the cathedral is free and included in the ticket to climb the tower. By 10:45 am we had deposited our bags and I mean all bags, including small sling bags, at the cloak room and got into the queue for the 11 am climb (they don’t allow you to climb before your slotted time). After a quick frisk check we entered the tower and immediately you feel tipsy.. a feeling which continues all the way up to the top. Its an amazing climb with some great views of the the square and the town from up there. Wouldn’t recommend the climb in-case you have vertigo or are claustrophobic.

Pisa is a small, quaint little town and can easily done as a day trip from Florence or Cinque Terre.

After a quick and yummy lunch from a food-truck right at the entrance to the tower we commenced our walk back towards the station to catch our 13:30 train onward to my fav Cinque Terre!