Pisa and Lucca

When we were staying in Tuscany, one of the days Mom took Jack, Briana, Landon, and I to Pisa and Lucca for a day. It was about an hour drive to Pisa, we stopped at Lucca on the way back. We went to Pisa first, when we got there we easily found parking, thankfully. We parked and walked to the tower of Pisa. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is really leaning! I had never really thought that it would be that far off center. Pictures of the tower I could not really tell it was that bad. But now that I have seen it, I can tell that it is leaning a lot! We got in a long line to get tickets. When we got to the front we asked the lady how much it would cost to go up the tower and she said 90 euro's and a 90 minute wait. We said no we have to think about it. We paid to see the Baptistery and the Cathedral was free. After the Baptistery and the Cathedral, we thought it looked interesting enough so we got back into the line to get tickets, this time the next tour would be a 2 hour wait. "No, we will pass on it."

We then got a little lunch and walked back to our car. We headed for Lucca next. Lucca is a LTZ (Limited Traffic Zone.) Meaning that you can not drive in the old city of Lucca without a permit, try it and you get fined. We parked outside the old city and walked in. The reason that we went was to see the wall!. This wall is complete the whole way around the old city. The distance around the wall is about 3 miles. The wall in 40' high and 60' wide, and it dates from the 1500's. The wall is so wide that cars can drive up on top. Although the only cars that we saw on the top of the wall were little trucks that were picking up trash and emptying trash cans. There were a lot of people on the wall. People walking dogs, running, strolling, and riding bikes. We saw a double bike for 4 people. Mom really wanted to get one to ride so she googled rent a bike and when we got to the place it was closed, they did not have the kind of bikes we wanted anyway. The guy who was working there told us where to go and we started out to find it.

We did not find the place that the guy told us about, but we did find a market. The market stalls had everything from clothes, to cell phone cases, food, pocket knifes, and other random stuff. At one end of the market there was a small ice-skating rink. There were lots of people on the ice. We then made our way back to the wall and just as we were going to go back up I saw the bikes that we were looking for! We rented one for 4-6 people and had so much fun! We rode around the wall 2 times. We passed many other people with the same kind of bike. Every time we passed a bike like our's Landon would ring the bell. He could not peddle as well because his legs are too short. I did most of the steering. That was my favorite part, Jack did it for a little but, no one felt comfortable with him driving. So I did it the rest of the time. After going around the wall 2 times we had to return the bike and leave because our car parking meter had run out. We had a great day! The best part was seeing the leaning tower of Pisa and riding the bike in Lucca.