Leaning Tower Photo Bloopers

Demonstrating my super-human strength

Every tourist who visits the Leaning Tower of Pisa must come away with a 'Look!  I'm holding up the tower!' photo.  It's an unwritten, mandatory rule.  With the picture above, I came pretty close to getting a good shot.  However, this is the result of many attempts.  Observe:

Nope

More tourists behind me

Not even close, I'm making a funny face

and the tourists remain

And sometimes when I attempt to photograph major monuments I come away with photographs of other tourists examining their own photographs.  I think it's time I took a photography class.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

Wandering through the streets of Pisa, we finally reached the Piazza del Duomo where the infamous Leaning Tower can be found.  The piazza was swarming with tourists such as ourselves, but I was still enamored by the gorgeous architecture.  An impending train departure prevented us from hiking to the top of the tower, which I really wanted to do, but the grounds of the piazza are absolutely beautiful.  The weather that day was sunny and warm, making time spent outdoors very enjoyable.  It served as a welcome departure from the all the wuthering going on in Leeds at the time.  For a few minutes we sat on the grass, drinking in the atmosphere while Maggie read us Henry James's thoughts on the piazza from his text Italian Hours.  Viewing Italian architecture to beautiful prose in the company of fabulous friends is a fail-proof formula for a great time.  Now, without further ado, is my little tour of Pisa's Piazza del Duomo. 

 The cathedral and the tower

Traveling Buddies

Baptistry

 Francesca and Maggie

Tanya and the Baptistry

Front of the Cathedral

A closer view -- I just love those columns

 One last shot of the Tower

Before making a mad dash for the train station, we wandered through the Baptistry and Cathedral.  Photos of the interiors to come.  I also have some rather funny photo bloopers documenting my attempt to capture the stereotypical holding-up-the-tower shot.  Oh, the joys of being a tourist!

Pisa, Round Two

I have just a few more pics of Pisa to share before moving on to the Leaning Tower and what not.  These were taken by Maggie, which explains her absence from the shots.  I think she really captured the spirit of Pisa. I particularly love the photo she took of Tanya, Francesca and me walking through a small Italian market.  The produce available from fruit and veggie vendors is so fresh, and I love the aesthetic burst of colour a market like this provides.  Picturesque and charming, they fit in with the European architecture perfectly. 

Pisa; Or, the Genesis of My Italian Adventure

 Halfway down this collage on the right is a photo of the four of us at lunch

From left to right: Maggie, Tanya, Diana and Francesca

I realized the other day that while I have made minor allusions here and there to my recent holiday in Italy, I haven't shared much about it.  Well, that's going to change.  After the UK, Italy has been the fantasy travel destination of choice since I was a growing girl.  Thus, it really was a dream come true when my uni friends Tanya and Maggie (also fellow Americans) invited me to go with them for a ten-day tour of the country.

On 5 April 2011 we flew into Pisa where our adventure began.  We were blessed with very warm, verging on hot, weather.  I was struck with two impressions upon arriving in this gorgeous country.  1- the architecture is charming!  2- I'm really confused! It had been nearly seven years since I had traveled to a non-English-speaking country, so it was quite jarring to suddenly be thrown into a culture where I didn't understand a thing!  I developed a new-found gratitude for my ability to read; staring at boards of Italian in which I was lucky to decipher the odd word was extremely frustrating.  Literacy, in any language, truly is a gift.

Luckily for us, Maggie's former flatmate (and native Italian) Francesca was there to greet us.  She served as a fantastic guide/translator and immediately led us to a nearby restaurant for a lovely outdoor meal.  Afterwards, I had my first Italian gelato.  I debated long and hard over which option to choose and ultimately settled on a caramel gelato.  It was delicious, though I learned later in the trip that I prefer the fruit flavours. 

From there, we traipsed through the streets of Pisa, making our way to the infamous Leaning Tower.  That's up next on the Italian Adventure agenda!