Day 9
We woke up bright and early and were soon on our way to Pisa. Beautiful morning, cool breeze, divine coffee, and the gooiest, messiest chocolate croissant to kick off the trip.
Pisa looked like a sweet little town, with many many young people, thanks to the University. Apparently Galileo Galilei was from here.
We took a bus to the Field of Miracles, which houses the cathedral, the baptistry, and yes, the Leaning Tower. So you have a population of 90000 in this town, and probably another 90000 visitors daily, 90% of which will be at the tower, which was actually a structural error compounded! The duomo and the baptistry are pretty, but the Leaning Tower is SO CUTE! After hanging around for a bit, watching people in all the silly poses pushing or holding up the tower, doing a few ourselves, we decided to hop on to a train to Lucca.

Lucca: another pretty medieval town with its high walls lined with trees and perfect for cycling/ running/ walking/ picnic-ing. We hired two separate bikes after struggling with a tandem cycle and did 2 rounds of the wall, punctuated by a very tasty lunch at a ristorante on the wall. In fact, we never really stepped into the town except for the bicycle arrangement. The guys in the shop were from Punjab, and charged us only half the price!

From Lucca we boarded a train to Firenze; it stopped at a station in between and did not budge for a very long time. This was a double decker train, and naturally, we sat on top to admire the Tuscan countryside, as did many other tourists. After waiting at the station for over 30 min, someone thought to check what was the matter, and realized the train was heading back to Lucca! We scrambled out and ran across to the next platform into another train which was, fortunately, going to Firenze.
Later, we wandered over to the Duomo, looking for a cafe that was showing the Italy-Paraguay match. Hardly any locals though, to lend atmosphere, as it was the centre of the tourist area. Nice dinner with local wine and tiramisu, and other tourists to chat with, though the match could’ve been more exciting for Italy!