Day 35 - Leaning Tower of Pisa

Caught the train to Florence, found the 'hostel', dumped my stuff and headed out to Pisa to try to extract some value out of my dodgy Eurail pass (have I mentioned to never get one of these, they are not worth it - live and learn).

My first memory of the Leaning Tower of Pisa comes from the classic movie Superman III where the evil Superman straights it out and later the good one fixes it - much to the dismay of the kitch souviener maker. Thus it was kinda cool to finally see it.

Naturally on comes the engineering hat. The first thing is the extent of the lean. I'd read it was 4.1m off center in the guide book months ago. It isn't until you are there you realise just how much 4.1m actually is - a huge amount. Now the one good thing about engineering 'disasters' (bridges falling down, planes flying into buildings, massive clay slides etc) is that you learn so much.

First up with this one, because the building is on a slope, it radically changes wind and water flow around it. Thus it erodes in a funny way and even how it gets dirty is so much different.

I also went for a climb up the tower which is limited to 30 people at a time. As soon as you step in, you realise that this thing isn't hollow and it is a massive amount of weight that is off the vertical alignment. Walking up the spiral stairs is funny. Every half rotation it is more difficult to walk up the stairs, then every other half rotation it is easier to walk up the stairs due to it being off the horizontal. The view from the top was naturally wonderful but only allowed 30 minutes per group of 30 (that includes going up and down).