One of the main attractions that comes to mind when most people think of Italy is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The iconic “holding up the tower” photos are on every tourist’s bucket list so of course it was one of our must-sees as well.

My two roommates and I booked train tickets (only 18 euro roundtrip!) for after class one day to spend about four hours in Pisa for the evening to take our photos with the tower and explore the area. We booked our tickets for the Pisa San Rossore train station, which is the closest station to the tower, so we wouldn’t have to walk too far. The station looked more like just a cement slab than anything else and when we got on our way to the tower, we weren’t sure if we were even in the right place. We had to walk through a run-down residential area that was kind of sketchy.

Luckily, I can use the data on my phone for the GPS so we knew we were headed in the right direction even though it looked like there was no way the Leaning Tower of Pisa could be anywhere close. We turned a corner and BAM! there was the tower smack in the middle of this little residential town. We were so taken aback at how strange it looked leaning over this run-down area.

There were pushy people selling trinkets right at the entrance of the gates that enclosed the tower and a cathedral. I was warned before going to Pisa that the pickpockets are bad there so we kept our bags close and in front of us the whole time. Once inside the gates, it wasn’t as sketchy and since it had just rained before we got there, the crowds weren’t too bad either. From my research on Pinterest, we had a pretty good idea of the fun poses we wanted to do with the tower and we knew that it was best to stand on a stumpy little cement fixture with a rounded top to get the best angle for photos. After the rain though, they were pretty slippery to stand on!

We took a bunch of pictures while the rain held out and then had three hours left to spend in Pisa when all we really wanted to do was go back to Florence. We walked down one of the touristy side streets to find a place to eat dinner even though it was only about 4:30 p.m. I had the idea that I wanted to eat pizza for dinner while in Pisa (get it?) so that was our only requirement for our restaurant that evening.

We had a nice dinner with really good cheese and prosciutto pizza and as we were walking back toward the tower, the rain started. The interesting thing about the rain in Italy, is that it doesn’t hold a candle to the rain we have in Florida. The predictability of rain in Italy is similar to that of Florida where the forecast could call for rain all day and you’ll never feel a drop and the next day when it’s supposed to be sunny, it rains all day. However, what the Italians consider rain, Floridians consider a sprinkle that doesn’t affect us at all. Even the “storms” in Italy are more like our afternoon summer showers in Florida. We’ve learned not to take the rain here too seriously because it’s not at all as bad as we’re used to back home.

With two more hours to kill and not wanting to spend any more time in Pisa, we decided to catch an earlier train even though we didn’t have a ticket. We decided we would play “dumb Americans” if they asked for our ticket on the train and we didn’t have one for that time.

When we got to the train station, we saw a train was supposed to come in 15 minutes that would get us back to Florence, which was perfect. Well, that train got delayed 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, and eventually it was canceled. The next train coming to Pisa and going to Florence also ended up getting canceled. At this point we were thinking it was bad karma since we were trying to catch a train we didn’t have a ticket for. Because so many trains to Florence were getting canceled, we knew there was no way they would bother checking train tickets on board because so many people had to go on the train that weren’t originally scheduled for it. We ultimately got on a train around 6:20 and got back to Florence at 7:30, which was earlier than our original train was even supposed to leave Pisa.

Our consensus on Pisa was that it was a fun day trip to go and take pictures, but that you really don’t need more than an hour or two to spend there because there’s really nothing else to do besides take pictures. We’ve advised everyone else from our group who is going to Pisa to not give themselves “exploring Pisa” time when booking train tickets because it’s just not worth it.