Italy's North Coast - Day 2

On our second day we drove an hour drive east to the village of Pisa, which is of course home to the world famous "leaning tower."  We called it the "leaning tower of Pizza," and we of course got our funny pictures of the kids trying to push it over.  The village is pretty touristy, but we still enjoyed it.  Of course the main attraction is the tower, but the rest of the village was cool as well.

Construction on the tower first started in 1173.  The tower was originally intended to be a bell tower for the cathedral next door.  However, shortly after its completion the soil under the foundation began to give way and the tower shifted.  In 1589 the Italian scientist Galileo did his famous experiment from the top of the tower, dropping two balls of different sizes to compare mass versus gravity.

Centuries later engineers stabilized the tower in 2000, so now tourists like us can scale to the top in safety.  Ben and I purchased tickets and hiked to the top, which was pretty cool.  For me, it was pretty amazing to see my son on top of such an iconic tower.  Megan's favorite part of the day was taking a horse carriage ride around the village, where we got to see Galileo's birthplace.  That was cool also.

Later that night we returned to Levanto, where we took a train to one of the Cinque Terre villages.  We went to Riomaggiore, where we had a great Italian dinner and walked around the village.  In addition to the great dinner our favorite part of the evening was seeing the Italian coast at night.  It was pretty stunning.

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In PISA

Galileo's Birthplace

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In RIOMAGGIORE