AN OVERVIEW Provided by Wikipedia.com

Pisa ( /ˈpiːzə/; Italian pronunciation: [ˈpiːsa][1]) is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower (the bell tower of the city's cathedral), the city of over 88,332 residents (around 200,000 with the metropolitan area) contains more than 20 other historic churches, several palaces and various bridges across the River Arno.

The city is also home of the University of Pisa, which has a history going back to the 12th century and also has the mythic Napoleonic Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies as the best Superior Graduate Schools in Italy.

                 

A STOP ON THE TRAIL: PISA PICTURES

My Pisa Music Playlist

MY VIDEO LOGS & JOURNAL

Pisa was directly on our route and we were eager to see the famous leaning tower. Its an image that's been used over and over for a million different things. I'm sure at one point I was coloring it in during 3rd grade art class. Your here, why not see it right? After we caught some sleep on the train we came to a halt in Pisa. After making a quick assessment on our map we determined that we were clear across town. It was approximately 3/4 miles. At the time I was in college, it was just a bunch of us Army folk and of course we were used to exerting ourselves. It was practically a ruck march. The one thing that none of us had anticipated were the North Africans.

On our way into Italy customs officials at the airport had distributed visitors information packets which specifically cited that there were some (not all) North African immigrants who were pushing stolen and unlawful items in the country. I hadn't even given this a second thought until we made our way through the city. Apparently every North African pushing stolen items decided that Pisa was the place to be. They were selling all sorts of things, mostly mundane items you would find on any street corner in NYC (watches, jewelry, electronics, etc.) The biggest item was completely legitimate however; umbrellas. It was raining feverishly that day and we all had our big euro bags on our backs. Luckily we had the built in tarps to cover them. Like I have said in previous blogs; if you get one of these make sure it has a built in tarp.

Anyway these guys just didn't take the hint. It got to the point that we had to start yelling at them in both Italian and English that we weren't interested. And there was no communication problem, these guys all spoke pretty good english. Once we reached the tower in question we were all exhausted and starving for that matter. Nobody ate the whole day because we had been focused on our goal to see the tower.

Pictured by David Peters, Fine Art America

I know this won't be the most popular response. Maybe it was because I was running on train car sleep, or that I rucked for few miles, or that I hadn't eaten all day but if it's along your route I would say go ahead and stop but don't go out of your way to see this. It was plagued by massive overcrowding, very aggressive street salesman (North Africans incessantly pushing stolen items), and nothing else besides this one attraction. There's a lot of other stuff to see in Italy. After the 2 weeks I spent there I can only remember dull things from here unfortunately.