"The Pisa Run"

 A.K.A.: “The Pisa Gauntlet”, “The Pisa Dash”, most Tour Director’s LOATHE the run into Pisa however we do realize of course that it IS an item to be ticked off most peoples bucket-list and needs to be seen at least once in their lives so we attempt to make the experience as painless as possible. Personally, I liken a trip to Pisa to that of a trip to a dentist to get your wisdom teeth pulled out but without any anaesthetic!

 So here is a blow-by-blow description of what the first-timer to Pisa will experience so that you are prepared for the events that are about to unfold as you enter this “gauntlet”. The ultimate aim of course being to achieve the “Holy Grail of Pisa” being a photo of this less-than-average height bell tower that is on a lean which is probably not much more than most towers in the Venetian lagoon or some other old Italian villages!

1) Upon exiting the Autostrada all seems fine. You have been lulled into a false sense of security by the “smoothe and unstressed driving amongst locals on the local highway…cough cough splut splut! Your coach slips through the Toll and hopefully seamlessly because your Italian coach driver has his Italian VIA electronic toll card working and topped up for a change. Straight after at the “T”-intersection is the “Pisa Welcoming Society”. Lovely looking ladies wearing VERY short, brightly coloured skirts (short EVEN by Italian standards – some people mistake their skirts for belts!) and much cleavage on display. They like to either sit on the road barriers or simply stand at the side of the road into Pisa. Other Tour Directors have been known to describe them as either “ladies who wait for the “bus that never comes”” or that they are the “lemonade sellers” but no lemonade stand within a 2 mile radius! In either case their real occupation does involve “welcoming” people but of a different kind (allegedly!!!) (Unfortunately no pics here as I feel that it would be a HUGE invasion of the privacy of these ladies! Also I couldn't get my camera out fast enough as i was driving past them!!)

Lying in wait

2) Upon passing this “Welcoming committee” (which can number 1 to 5 or 6 depending on the hour, temperature, state of business, whether Silvio Berlusconi is in town etc etc) one must enter the dreaded coach park. A coach park that could cater for 200 coaches without blinking an eye is also home to the teams of “Original Fake Watch sellers” from Africa. As soon as your coach pulls up both front and rear doors will open to reveal 2 to 4 of these gentlemen in your way selling their “original-fake” Rolex, Patek, Omega, Cartier etc etc watches amongst other “genuine” objects of desire such as "genuine" designer sunglasses. The fact that you have hit the pavement at 40C plus is of little concern to them as you try to path unscathed through their ambush. Should you have purchased a GENUINE Swiss watch from the home of Heidi, cow bell-ringing(ho hum) and Toblerone chocolate earlier in the tour, itself it matters not. They still persist like flies around the wildebeest on the veldt to get you to purchase a watch for your other wrist!

...and attack!

And here comes a "fresh" coach!

The first cruise ship bus arrives

3) Having passed this test, the next stage of your “Indiana Jones”-like trials is to walk along the roads, pedestrian paths,bike paths and railway crossing without being hit by a local car,bicycle or scooter (let alone a train!). This dreaded pathway is one that funnels all the Cruise Ship masses into it. The unsuspecting and untrained traveller can be swept into this Roman legion-style attack on Pisa by the cruising-hordes, destined to disappear for minutes like a surfer trying to escape the battering from below the foaming maelstrom of a 5m freak wave. Once you are spat-out from these charging groups you could well be 50-100m further down the path from when you accidentally got caught up in it! I also liken it to the Running of The Bulls in Pamplona. Those with brave hearts should try to run/walk alongside these cruise ship groups but to confront head-on or enter within them is done-so at ones own peril!

"Umbrella Alley"

4) Once one manages to avoid being sucked into the cruise-ship attacks then one must enter Umbrella Alley. It is here that men from, it would seem a sub-continental background will cry, “unleash the tacky Pisa umbrella attack”! With this signal you will be set upon by a number of men with Pisa-print umbrellas wanting you to buy these “high-quality” anti-rain aides. It will matter not that upon most summer-day visits to Pisa it most likely has indeed cracked that magical 40C mark and there is not a cloud in the sky – their persistence is mightily admirable though so keep looking forward and keep your mind focused on the goal. Should you arrive into Pisa on a day when the heavens do in fact open then be warned as it seems that downtown Mumbai has been vacated and that most of its population now has somehow been squeezed into that one kilometer stretch between the coach park and the Holy Grail itself. Also the “Little Pisa Umbrella Workshop” on the outskirts of Shanghai has gone into overdrive and 24 hour production to supply each one of these salesmen with at least 20-30 of these “beautiful” umbrellas! Strange how the price suddenly doubles or triples on these rare rainy days!

Downtown "Nairobi" in Pisa

5) Upon exiting unscathed (hopefully) from Umbrella Alley one crosses a road (equally hopefully!) to enter downtown “Piazza d’Nairobi”. If you have come halfway across the world to buy carved wooden elephants or other African totems or African drums then you have certainly saved yourself half-a dozen injections, dodgy flights and 4WD crossings of crocodile or water buffalo infested rivers. Here is the place where Africa lives in Europe! One must always look down at this stage because whilst being bedazzled by drums,elephants and African jewelry there will always be a little wooden “letter-train” (ie a little train on the ground made up of carriages in the form of carved letters) ¾ of the way across the only path into town. Should you stumble over it and break it then of course you will be obliged to buy or at least make some offer for said damaged goods. Nice trick!

6) Half-way. Bravo!So ,you’re doing well not to get swept into the thickening groups of cruise-ship-hordes. You’re avoiding the umbrella and watch attacks with the stealth and deftness of a ninja assasin. It’s at this point one must be aware of the gypsies. Now over the years their methods have changed just like a football tem might slowly change how it plays as the opposition learns its key offensive plays. When I first started in this industry it was the older female gypsy with the “plastic baby” in a rug that would be thrown at you so you would drop your bags, catch the “baby” and before you knew it your goods were lost in the dense crowd. That is rarely seen these days. Often now it’s the large distraction from one whilst the others (they are team players generally) take advantage of that split second and remove you’re a) wallet b) purse c) camera 4) bag with goods from you. They are professionals after all! (Having said that not ALL gypsies are of course thieves – just a small minority but unfortunately they do give the rest a bad name). The gypsy/thief with a map/newspaper that comes up to whilst you are seated at a café with your goods on the table, they push the map in front of you and ask quickly something which you don’t understand and as quickly as they came they are gone, WITH your objects that were on the table! Anyway, it’s at this point of the “Pisa gauntlet” that one must become more aware of these possibilities.

Enter the markets at your own peril

Classy quality souvenirs

7) So now the markets begin. Many a girlfriend and/or wife has been lost in this section for hours at a time only to be washed out with the scars of having bartered their behind-off with locals over the wonderful BBQ/cooking aprons such as: gladiator/bikini girl/map of  Italy/leaning tower/ naked David statue/”very enhanced” naked David statue etc. etc.

Icons of Italy Pasta!

Penis-shaped pasta!

Myriads of leaning tower copies, key-rings,Pinocchios, corkscrews, caps, t-shirts, more umbrellas, penis-shaped pasta and any other Tuscan/Florentine paraphernalia add to the onslaught. Gentlemen if you are travelling with your partner then keep her close and keep a firm grip on that wallet! Eyes forward and don’t look left or right, your Holy Grail is VERY close now.

Almost there....

8) Upon passing this difficult final test one reaches the last gate and if one has managed to reach it safely after all the previous trials then they have earned the right to view…..the massive….the huge…the gigantic……well….in reality, the sort of tall but not really all that big ,verging on small-ish “is that it?” …Leaning Tower of Pisa!! Bravo!

You made it!!

Police "hard at work"!

It’s at this point that one has entered into the Field of Miracles, as it is known. A place where one will see a Baptistery, a church (yes, ANOTHER church!) and the Holy Grail itself, the Campanile (in a nut-shell,the leaning tower is simply the bell tower beside the church). Here there are lovely grassed sections which the local police STRICTLY enforce any entrance onto with their whistles (hmm, looks like things have changed since I was last there. Or perhaps last weekend’s soccer results or latest man-bags released by Valentino require deep discussion by them first before removing tourists fro this area these days!) Still, one must brave the tourist throngs from all over the world and the markets that continue.

The "Worshippers"!

As one slowly gets closer to the distant Tower, a strange thing starts to take hold of the gathering masses. Whether it be from Galilleo’s giant pendulum clock within the church, the alignment of the stars and the moon, the “blood-orange juice” and toast in plastic wrap that people ate for breakfast at their Italian hotel, people in their dozens begin facing away from the tower and reaching both hands out westward as if in praise of some Holy deity. (Or perhaps it is just a part of the Macarena that I never learnt?) Some confused people might even feel compelled to buck the trend and reach eastward but this is a rare site. In some cases there might even be a group, one behind the other, pushing against that unseen force to the west.




  Some scholars believe that these crazed individuals do not trust the Italian engineers who over the centuries have tried to correct the lean and are in fact trying to help “support” the leaning tower through their actions. The tower itself includes around 7 levels plus bell tower on top and apparently started leaning on its muddy/sandy base right after its construction began of its first level around 800 years ago. The first solution was of course just stop building. So for a few hundred years they stopped altogether. Nice idea! That will fix it! Then they continued on and up and as it continued to lean as they built they came up with an ingenious solution: why not compensate the lean by building each successive level just a “wittle-bit” over to the side against the lean. No need to worry if in fact it ends up shaped a bit like a banana, at least it won’t fall! So in fact if you were to hold a straight-edge up against a picture of the tower, one notices that it is in fact “bent”(no not THAT way!) – curved perhaps I should say! Very noticeable with the top housing for the bell-itself! Nice work!




   So for centuries “she” was fine until around the late 1980’s or so, when at almost 2m out from the vertical they decided it too dangerous for people to ascend any more. (When the Italian institutions tell you something “might” be dangerous to do then you TAKE NOTICE of that because it probably IS dangerous!)The solution to preventing a potential fall – wrap as many thick ugly steel cables as possible around the bottom level and attach them to a huge block of concrete to stop it from falling! NICE! Leonardo would have been proud of that solution! Not a great solution for pretty photos! It did the trick for a while until they came up with a truly Italian if not ancient Roman solution – more CONCRETE! “Veni vidi CONCRETI!” Apparently tonnes and tonnes of concrete was simply poured into the ground on the side away from the lean in the hope that the marshy soft ground below would give way and bring the tower slowly back the other way. And….BRAVO!! They reversed the lean back to its current level (AND without straightening it completely which of course for cruise-ships, Pisa-print umbrella-sellers, fake-watch-sellers, Nairobian drum and carved elephant sellers, “enhanced” statue of David BBQ apron sellers it would have been a TRAGEDY of Shakespearean proportions!)

You still have to get back yet!

   Photo taken, “Grasshopper”, your test has almost been completed, for now you must return and re-run the whole gauntlet that you managed to pass on the way in to The Field of Miracles in the first place. And should you be lucky enough to survive that final challenge then the 2nd Holy Grail of Pisa awaits you - the bathrooms at the coach park! And should you not have 0.50Euro cents at hand for the turnstile entry, never fear for the GREATEST reward of having passed the “Pisa Run” is that there will be someone there to give you change and for that you will DEFINITELY be grateful!

Ahhhhh, the train- complete with opera!

   Having said that, for those not willing to embark upon this Inca-trail type trial then IF one has a Tour Director with foresight and wonderful organization skills (and MORE-SO if he or she can push it through their accounts!) then that TD will organize for you a wonderful train journey (well…sort-of!) including the train-driver’s own operatic singing whilst in board (and YES you can buy his CD!) and thus avoid about a 1km walk each way and much of the aforementioned “gauntlet”!

  Ahhhh Pisa!! Salute! Bring on Florence!