Rained on in Pisa

3:30am Wednesday morning we got in the car and made our way to the airport for our flight to Italy. Once we arrived at the airport we pushed through the intense crowds to stand in line for our visa checks and to check my bag. A common thing in England is rude people cutting in line, as childish as it is. I had not really had it happen to me yet until we got into this line. Now, I know people crowd around so cutting is easier that way, but we were the next people to go to the counter, standing behind a yellow line, when some tall, skinny legged woman comes and stands right in front of us. She says something to Rachelle, something like “sorry I just need to give her my bag” I was thoroughly confused, and even more annoyed, but kept my mouth shut. Then she calls over her husband who also has a kid to go check in!!! I was in shock!! Luckily they were quick and we got through quick as well. We go over to security and I have never seen so many people in my entire life! And we’re talking ALL kinds of people…. Which also means all kinds of smells! We walked through the medal check thing and we all buzzed. Well, Rachelle went through with both the girls, so who knows who’s fault that one was, but I, alone, buzzed as well. We were then frisked! The woman patting me down pretty much touched my boobs and definitely grabbed my toosh! None of us were happy about it, but we were in the clear and given the go ahead to move along. We stopped at Starbucks, which again had a billion people, and the guy ringing me up asked me to sign the receipt and then write my number on the back “just in case”. It was awesome!

A fairly quick flight later, we landed in Pisa and were on our way. Wait, on our way where?! We asked where the tower was and how to get there. We also needed to know where the train station was so we could take it to La Spezia where our apartment was. We took a bus to the train station and then walked through crowds and crowds of people trying to figure out where to get the tickets and where to put our luggage. We found a Left Luggage place and paid 9 euro for our 3 bags. We were frantic, and pretty stressed through all this, but finally, we were off to the tower!

It was a beautiful walk though the town making up our own path to find the tower. As we got closer it started to sprinkle… more like mist. We turned the corner and there it was! Yep, it’s crooked! We did our typical tourist pose and let the girls run around for a while. We stopped at our first pizzeria and ate some delicious margarita pizza. By the time we were done, it was raining pretty hard, and we still had to walk all the way back to the station. There were people at almost every block trying to sell us umbrellas. I just wanted to say, “do you see us!? We are already soaked! What good will that umbrella do now!?!” But I held back. Dripping wet and with crying children we slowly but surly made our hike back. We could see the train station, but needed to go around a large blocked off construction section, and once we passed that, the station had disappeared. We had less than 30 minutes to pick up our luggage and get to the station. I ran though the street where the construction was to see if I could find the station, since it was the middle of a circular intersection, and still no luck. It was like it sprouted legs and just marched off! I was attempting to figure out where we were on our drenched map, but had absolutely no luck. At this point, I had forgotten about the rain that had gotten me so irritated before becasue I was so freaked out that we would miss our train. We finally asked some friendly people and turned out it was right up the street and the building we kept looking at thinking it should have been the station, but looked different, was in fact the station, just the other end of the building. A big sigh of relief and yet slight frustration that we were unknowingly looking right at it the whole time.

We got our luggage, found our platform, after going up then down then back up many stairs (yes, with luggage, 2 kids and a stroller). Through all that, we made it on the train and finally had a chance to sleep and eagerly wait to get to our apartment in La Spezia. Time to dry off and relax. Up next... Cinque Terre!