Lean on Me

Saturday was J.D.’s last day in Lucca.  It’s been a fast week, and a good one.  The Cinque Terre and Rome trips were fun but exhausting, so we only had a couple of days to enjoy Lucca itself.  I have always loved travelling with both my children, and that feeling has only been enhanced by being able to travel in Italy.

Shelley and J.D. began the day by running errands, going to the ATM and to an internet café where J.D. could print out boarding passes for his flight to Paris on Sunday morning. Then, while Shelley took her daily walk, J.D. and I rented bikes for an hour and rode around the wall.

Seeing Lucca by bicycle is definitely the way to go, although we did not have the courage to ride through the narrow streets of the city itself and weave in and out of the pedestrians and other cyclists.  Lucca has lots of bike rental places, and you can rent by the hour (3 Euros) or by the day (15 Euros).  You leave an ID, and you’re off.

You can ride a lap around the wall in about twenty minutes at a leisurely pace, so we did three laps to take advantage of our hour.  You can rent a regular bike, a tandem, or a bike “car.”  J.D. observed that every time we saw a bike car, it was stopped.

J.D. said he couldn’t remember the last time he rode a bike, and I of course responded, “It’s just like riding a bike.”  Riding atop the wall is pleasant and easy, as long as you pay attention to those out for a stroll who may not be paying attention to you along with the joggers and bikers coming in the opposite direction.  I almost got T-boned by a middle age woman who lost control of her bike for a second. The bikes are fitted with a warning bell you can use as you pass those walking.

A ride around the walls is a good way to get a sense of Lucca and see the Saturday morning sights.  J.D. observed that the build-up of Lucca outside the walls is focused on the East and South sides.  As we did our ride we passed a woman singing opera in one of the little buildings along the wall and saw re-enactors in one of the baluardos, the ramparts which used to be defensive lookouts.  They were preparing to fire an antique cannon.  I wanted to ask them if they did Civil War re-enacting as well.  On the east side of the city we saw the Saturday market and a drum corps parading into the area next to the market.  By our last lap we were passing members of the drum corps, still in costume, on bicycles themselves.

J.D. had an early Sunday flight, and there was neither a train nor a bus leaving early enough Sunday morning to get him to Pisa, so he decided to get a hotel room for Saturday night and we all took the train to Pisa mid-afternoon to see the Field of Miracles and the famous Leaning Tower and then have dinner.

As the train left Lucca, J.D. joked that the weather app on his phone said that there were thunderstorms in Lucca, which there clearly weren’t.  There some dark clouds in the distance, and by the time we arrived in Pisa the clouds were rolling in and threatening.  We got J.D. checked in to his hotel a couple of blocks from the train station, then caught a city bus and rode to the Field of Miracles.  The Field is a wide stretch of lawn that includes five buildings, all of them constructed from white marble. The Tower is by far the most famous, but there is also the Duomo (Cathedral), the Baptistery, and two museums.

Not surprisingly, what stands out the minute you walk through the walled gate to the Field of Miracles is that the Tower is leaning, really leaning.  I’d seen pictures, but was surprised at how much it leans.  The Leaning Tower of Pisa is 200 feet high and 55 feet wide, and began to lean soon after construction began in 1173.   After completing four stories, construction stopped for a century.  The next architect angled the next three stories in the opposite direction of the lean in an attempt to balance the tower, without success.  The base was reinforced in 1550, but in 1838 engineers pumped out ground water, destabilizing the Tower and increasing its lean a millimeter per year.  In 1990 the tower was closed and $30 million spent to stabilize it.  Apparently the key to stabilizing it was drilling 15-foot-long holes in the ground on the north side (the opposite side of where it leans) and removing 60 tons of soil.  That actually straightened out the lean by six inches.

What made the Leaning Tower famous is that it is where legend says Galileo, a native of Pisa and a professor of mathematics at the university there, dropped objects from the tower in an experiment to understand gravity.  Even without that claim to fame, the Tower would likely have earned notoriety.  The Leaning Tower was built to be the bell tower for the cathedral, and every city in Italy has a bell tower, but only one of them is leaning.  So the question is whether they would have built it to lean intentionally had they been able to plan it.  It certainly gives Pisa a tourism brand that other cities don’t have.

We elected not to climb the Tower, which you have to make reservations to do.  They allow 45 people every twenty minutes to climb its 280 steps.  We also elected not to take the classic tourist photo where you position yourself as if you’re holding up the Tower, but we might have been the only people there who didn’t.

We decided to tour the Duomo, the only of the buildings along the Field of Miracles where there isn’t an entry charge, but we had to go to the ticket office to get a voucher in order to get in, and we had to wait 45 minutes to be admitted.  As we walked over toward the Duomo, it began to pour, and people were scurrying everywhere.  We were able to get inside the entranceway to the Duomo, and were quickly joined by people not planning to go into the church but just wanting to get out of the rain.  It was clear that the lone attendant wasn’t happy, but she kept her cool.  After waiting close to half an hour, we were allowed to go in.  The church was impressive, but predictably after seeing St. Peter’s the day before, we probably didn’t appreciate it appropriately.

We had accomplished what we came to do, so we headed back out to catch the bus and grab dinner, stopping at the mass of souvenir stands just outside the wall.  It was cool enough that Shelley bought a sweatshirt, and she also bought a Leaning Tower of Pisa bottle opener (Pis-opener doesn’t have quite the ring of Popener), but we passed on the Leaning Tower shot glass (you know you’re drunk when it no longer appears to be leaning) and the t-shirt of Bart Simpson holding up the Leaning Tower.  Ay, Caramba!

We had thought about stopping and seeing the Leaning Tower after picking J.D. up at the airport a week ago, but he was too exhausted after his overnight flight.  I’m glad we were able to see it before he left, and glad that I can now say I’ve seen the Leaning Tower in person.