Whilst on my travels around Florence (which you can read all about here), we decided to do a one day trip to Pisa. We had pre-planned the trip so we set off from Florence centrale train station early doors and the train to Pisa was approximately one hour. When we got there we needed to get a bus to the sites that we wanted to see. The main reason for this trip was to see the leaning tower. Until I did some research before the trip happened, I did not release that the tower is in fact on a world heritage site which holds a variety of different site seeing opportunities.
Once on the site we were in absolute awe of just how beautiful everything was. The Pisa tower is one of four buildings which make up this complex. The first building constructed was the Cathedral called Duomo di Pisa which is absolutely inspiring, and it is set on a white marble platform. The next addition to be created was the baptistery. Then finally the campanile and the cemetery were added. When you buy your tickets you have to decide what package you want to buy. You buy the tickets for the tower on their own and they cost €18 each to go up to the top. The rest of the sites you can buy in different combinations for one site it was €5, for two €7 and for 3 €8. We decided we want to just pay €5 the baptistery. To go into the cathedral it is free, but you have to go to the ticket office to get a ticket with a specific time on which I think is a great idea so you do not end up queuing for hours.
I thought it was all very organised as we decided to go up the tower first we arrived at 12pm and we managed to get a 1pm slot. There have 40 slots per every 15 minutes. My dad and I arrived and we got into the entrance of the tower at 1.05pm. There are 297 steps to climb up which does not seem a lot when saying it out loud. However, the steps were small in width and the spiral up to the top was very tight. Once at the top though, it was worth all the huffing and puffing that it took to get there. The views were absolutely incredible from the top. The tower has eight stories stacked on top of each other. At the top you can feel the definite slant in the tower, you can stay and walk around the top platform and look at the bell chambers.
This is the view from the top of the duomo -
The cathedral was absolutely beautiful both inside and out, and even if you don't want to pay to go into the sites it is worth a trip just to walk around the collection of buildings and look inside the duomo. I have been completely overwhelmed by the beauty of the duomo's which I visited whilst on this trip to Italy. The baptistery was just as magnificent as everywhere else, and we all came away saying how glad we were that we made the effort to go.
Unfortunately, when we got back to the train station we did not have enough time to explore the town of Pisa. I would love to go back if I had the opportunity to and see what more it has to offer.
Lucy
xoxo