Leaning Tower of Pisa

From being very young it had always been my ambition to visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa but for one reason or another I never got around to it – only to discover, when the opportunity arose, that the Tower was closed to the public to allow it to be stabilised and it remained closed for many years.


However the re-opening of the Tower coincided with a Mediterranean cruise I was taking with my family and the ship was to visit Livorno, the port for Pisa and Florence.

 

Cruise ship excursions are exorbitantly expensive, especially for a family of four, so I planned to travel there independently and with this in mind I set about it with military precision.

 

We would leave the ship at the first opportunity, take a taxi from the quayside to the station in Livorno, then the train to Pisa and from there another taxi to the Tower. Building in plenty of time for unforeseen eventualities I booked and paid online for timed tickets for our visit to the Tower. There was a stern admonition on the Tower website that the ticket only allowed a short window for entry to the Tower and if we did not arrive in time we would lose our slot.


They say that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy and in this case the enemy were the taxi drivers drawn up on the quayside. Not one of them was prepared to take us the short distance to the station in Livorno. The only thing they offered us were return journeys all the way to Pisa or Florence – at a price not much less than the cruise ship excursions. No amount of pleading or begging made a difference. As tourists we clearly had a target tattooed on our foreheads to the effect that we were there to be screwed and boy did they know how to screw us.


So we had to resort to Plan B. If we could get to the port gates surely we could get a taxi from there? The port gates were over a mile away but the cruise line had laid on a free shuttle bus. The only problem was that it didn’t leave for another half an hour and even when it did it was held up by a bridge which chose to lift up in front of us to let a boat through, keeping us waiting for what seemed like an age.


By now time was beginning to pass but we were still within the tolerance I had set for getting to our timed visit at the tower. 


But we had not reckoned on the equally rapacious taxi drivers at the port gate. The vultures were lying in wait for us, and the choice was the same: Pisa or Florence or nothing, but certainly not Livorno station. I have a friend who says that the best way to fix the tourist product is first to fix the taxi drivers. At that point the only way I could think of fixing the drivers was to stand a couple of them up against a wall and shoot them - pour encourager les autres!


So how to get to the station? This would involve Plan C. It would have to be by public transport. Eventually, with the assistance of some helpful locals who seemed to understand our schoolboy Latin coupled with some basic sign language, we found a bus stop and boarded a bus for the station. The bus was crowded, it made many stops and it made slow progress through the traffic but it did get us to the station – just too late. As we ran on to the platform the last train that would get us to Pisa on time was pulling out.


It was an hour for the next train and, having waited decades for this opportunity, it looked as though we would miss our slot. To say that we were disappointed came nowhere near expressing the despair and anguish we felt. So near and yet so far.


But things got decidedly better after that. The train arrived on time and the taxi drivers at Pisa station were only too willing to take us to the Tower.


We approached the ticket office with some trepidation trying to work out which excuse would arouse sufficient sympathy to excuse our late arrival. We asked the girls to look as sad as possible with a pleading expression on their faces. In an attempt to capitalise on the caricature of the Italian male my wife even resorted to unbuttoning the top buttons on her blouse. It was all wasted. The attendant in the ticket kiosk took one look at the tickets, smiled, tapped on his computer and handed over new tickets with a revised entry time on them. We could just walk into the Tower immediately. The relief was unimaginable. We were free to go up the Tower and then afterwards we could come down and pose for photos, like everyone else, with our arms out holding the Tower up.


Facts about the Leaning Tower


 

Top Attractions in Pisa