2005: Pisa was a stopoff point on our trip from Perugia to Nice. During a weeklong break between portions of our program in Perugia, four of us decided to train up to France. Having shared a nice coffee earlier in the day with my mom in Florence, our journey continued towards Nice, with a layover in Pisa. It couldn’t have been longer than half an hour. (I tried to confirm this in my Livejournal from back then, but alas, I chose not to write about this trip. Why, I do not know. Yes, I had Livejournal. And yes, there still are some pretty funny bits.) While Caitlin and I chose to hang back at the station, Chris and Kathryne made a run for the tower. 20 minutes passed, 25 minutes passed. Caitlin and I decided that, if necessary, we’d continue on without them. As the train came in and boarding commenced, Chris and Kathryne arrived, sweaty and out of breath. “Was it worth it?” I asked. I forget their response.

2011: Julia and I went on a Tuscan circuit of Pisa and Lucca during our first weekend in the country. Pisa is an easy reach by train from Florence, with lines running every half hour, and rides taking only an hour. The front of the Pisa train station is a roundabout ringed with palm trees with a fountain in the center. We headed toward where we imagined the tower would be. The flow of tourists was our guide. If there were folks with fanny packs going to or from a certain direction, we were certain we were on the right course. The large piazza we passed on the way was run down and under construction, with the storefronts surrounding it looking no better. It was as if Pisa still hadn’t gotten around to fixing the damage done by World War II. When we got to the river, our path was blocked by a caravan of motorcycles. These hog enthusiasts blocked our path for more than five minutes as they made their way around the city. They were weekend warriors mostly, with flags hanging off the back of their bikes, and cuts representing random spots all over Tuscany. (The term “cut” I had only recently learned from a marathon catchup session on Sons of Anarchy.) Once the last of the leather-clad had made their way, we continued with the flow of tourists.

The tower is found in grassy campo, a field that also features a duomo and a baptistery. The only words that can truly describe it are profanity. Seeing it, my reaction was varying degrees of this: “What the fuck? Are they fucking kidding me? They cannot be fucking serious. How the fuck? Wait, what the fuck? Do you see this fucking thing? How is it…fuck!” I don’t like to resort to profanity too much in my writing, but that’s the only way to describe being near this thing. It’s a fucking natural wonder. (I can’t help myself.) Your world gets shattered looking at it. Every bit of natural law and reason you thought you knew is dashed at the sight of it. How, why, what, huh? It’s a tower, but it’s fucking leaning! It’s not even a little bit, either. You expect that thing to come down on some poor family at any moment. How does this thing exist? Because the thing was giving me an existential crisis, we headed back to the train, careful to avoid ruining the pictures of too many posing folks on the way.

Our next stop was Lucca, a place that was repeatedly named as a gem of the region by our guidebook. Considering that the train cost less than three euro to get there, how would we not go? The station at Lucca is a five minute walk from the medieval city itself. To get in, you follow a pathway through what used to be a moat up to the city’s walls. There, the winding path climbs up the wall, through a mildew and urine-smelling corridor that’s been plastered with graffiti. Then, at the top, you get a view of the city in all its medieval glory. It truly has been well preserved. The streets of Lucca are empty save for a few main thoroughfares, and the city offers ample opportunities to get lost. We had no real spots on our itinerary, so that’s exactly what we did. At the bookstore on Lucca’s main stretch, I was tempted to buy an Italian version of the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire, until I remembered that the thing weighed ten pounds. Julia instead got a copy of Pinocchio to study. We basked in the sun at Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, and decided on hitting Puccini’s house and climbing Torre Guingi. The Puccini house was free, and featured a few playbills and costumes from his operas, along with a couple other videos as well. As far as free museums go, it was way more absorbing than it had any right being. Torre Guingi also defied expectations as its top housed a small garden with grass and a few trees. It would have been a fine place to relax had sudden wind gusts not constantly threatened to blow me off the top of it. We got a pic, and quickly descended. On the way back out, we grabbed a drink in a busy piazza, and hit dinner at a spot located in the wall itself. Julia enjoyed what was probably her favorite pasta in Italy, and I startled myself, half tipsy, as I walked over a glass floor suspended over an ancient well. There are certain things that you don’t want to walk over, and a bottomless well is certainly one of them. We paid our bills, and strolled back to the station. A few miscues with the automatic ticket machine later, we were on the train, and headed back to Florence.

Both were cities of fulfilled expectations. I was told that Pisa was a terrible place save for the tower, and it pretty much was that, except the tower was fucking unreal, taunting me with its crimes against science, gravity, and God. Lucca was a calm change of pace, and a great spot to recharge. Our next weekend trip had a lot more expectations riding on it, though: Perugia.