Tower of Pisa - holding on for dear life

this morning we all took a little day trip to pisa. it's about an hour train ride from florence and it costs less than 10 euros. so how can you not check it out?

we purchased our tickets at 9:48am and our train was to depart at 9:53am... i told you, it's not fun unless you run... but i'd really much prefer not running. i hate running onto a train. it's always awkward cuz then you quietly try to catch your breath because you don't want to draw too much attention to the fact that you're frantic, out of shape and look like a total weirdo for running in the first place because it turns out the train has been delayed... in our case it wasn't delayed... but i still hate looking frantic! 

so we made it to pisa just after 11am and first thing is to buy tickets to go inside the tower. they have a timed system. we needed to get the earliest one so we make it back to do the hop on hop off in florence. 













tickets were 15 euros each, which is not bad. whole thing lasted about half an hour. doesn't seem like a lot of time, but it is enough to climb all those stairs to the top and down again.

now i'm not that claustrophobic, so the tight space going up the spiral steps didn't bother me. it was the lack of security. and i don't mean big scary security guards with aviators holding guns ready to shoot. i mean security on the actual tower. as in, safety nets and 7ft. fences and the whole shabang!


see here's the thing... i'm afraid of falling. whether it be falling down the stairs or i dunno... off a roller coaster (damn you final destination 3!), but i don't like to fall. 

back story: there was this one time when i was in the library at school. i was running down the escalator - i needed to catch my bus - and i dunno what the hell happened. if some idiot pushed the emergency stop button or the escalator power just magically went off cuz it thought it would be funny to see the running girl fall and bash her face against the sharp edges of the steps... but whatever happened, the escalator just came to a slamming halt and i flew forward. lucky for my face that i wasn't holding any books. so my hands were free and i was able to grab hold of the railing... or they would have been in for one major lawsuit.

anyways...

the tower of pisa has minimal to no security for falling. it's not one big staircase. there are different levels in which you have to walk outside around the tower to the next point (as you can see the tiny people in the picture). it is in these cases where my fear of falling kicks in. because not only is this tower leaning, i am walking outside meters and meters off the ground on practically a 4 foot ledge where the only thing protecting me from slipping and falling off is a fence that is up to my waist. and might i add this fence is not bolted to the ground, so if i did slip and fall, the fence would just fall with me. 

the higher you go, the smaller the steps and it does become a pretty tight squeeze. plus there is no actual hand rail to hold. 

as predicted, the view from the top is nice, but once you've snapped your photos you have to repeat your trip down. there are no elevators for obvious reasons. 

i think i could manage to go up again, but not any time soon... and only if need be... like if mr. louboutin was waiting there to give me a free pair of his unfairly gorgeous shoes... or if johnny depp was stranded and i'm the only one who could save him... but that's all!