Arriving in Pisa we headed for the iconic leaning tower expecting to have to queue for tickets, then queue for our slot to climb the tower, then queue to visit the cathedral and the baptistry. As it turned out, there wasn’t any queuing. We walked straight into the ticket office, got our tickets and only had 30 minutes to wait for our time slot to climb the tower, so we had a walk around and found somewhere to have lunch later on. 

The climb to the top of the tower was a surreal experience. You climb over 200 steps that go round the edge of the inside of the tower, but because the tower is leaning at about 40’, you had to watch your balance on the steps. At the top, you walk outside the tower and there is a magnificent view of Pisa and the huge bells that adorn the top of the tower. The bells are still rung at 1200 noon daily and for any special occasions, despite the angle of the tower making the hammers lean at various angles. 

After visiting the tower we had lunch in one of the many restaurants off the main square, despite it being very touristy, the cost was quite reasonable. Then we visited the cathedral and the baptistery. The cathedral had restoration work in progress so it was a bit noisy, but despite this it was still a magnificent cathedral.

Then we decided to walk around the medieval wall, about 3km long. It had not rained all day and by now we had taken off our jackets and jumpers because it was so warm. 

By the end of the day we had seen a lot of Pisa, kept dry and there had not been the crowds that we had been expecting.

Back on Muskie, now the weather appeared to have cleared up, we started on our extensive jobs list. 

Chris wanted to re wire some of the snakes wedding that was under the floor boards and particularly in the engine compartment to make it easier to get the engine out when we finally are able to do it. He also wanted/needed to change the fresh water hoses and the hot water hoses that must be the original ones from 38 years ago. The valve between the two drinking water tanks had broken so we couldn’t drain/fill the port tank, so that needed to be replaced, and while we were on the topic of water, with all the rain we had recently, we discovered more leaks in the boat that had not been apparent during our time in Greece where we didn’t see rain from April to November. So while Chris opened up the floor boards and started to squeeze into impossible spaces, I cracked on with cleaning and polishing the topsides and re painting the boot topping in a different colour. Now our hull was turning greenish with the copper coat, I didn’t like the very dark blue boot topping.

The famous leaning tower and the cathedral.

 

New fresh water hoses going in.