People travel from all over the world to visit Pisa, for one reason: so they can take a picture where they pretend to support the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

This is the basic idea:

At any given moment there are at least 10 people trying to stand just right so they can take one of these pictures and use it as their facebook profile.  We took no such pictures for ourselves, but did take a few of other people.  Out of context it looks a little ridiculous.

Other than the tower, there is also a beautiful cathedral, baptistry and cemetery.  Pisa has a unique style of architecture referred to as Pisan-Romanesque – basically extensive use of arcades – columns and arches on the outside of the building –  that make the buildings look light and fragile.

One of the great ironies of tourism is that it’s no fun when there are a lot of other tourists around.  Pisa is the very embodiment of this uncomfortable paradox, so we only spent 4 hours there and then jumped back on a train for our next destination…