An Afternoon in Pisa (Just to Get Some Pizza) for a Young Couple

We arrived at Pisa International Airport from London around 11am.  We took a bus from the airport to Pisa Centrale train station (~5 mins).  We dropped off our luggage at the train station (~5 Euro per piece) to hold on to while we explored.  We would be returning to the station later in the afternoon to take our train to Florence.

From the train station, we walked about 100 yards north towards the circular Piazza with the statue of Vittorio Emanuele.  To the left will be the Tourist Information office (with its iconic “I” logo). Go in to grab a map to guide you on your walk to the Field of Miracles and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s about a 20-30 minute walk at medium pace.

The walk north to the Leaning Tower features a relatively pedestrian friendly zone.  There are a lot of young people (I assume from the University and schools) walking around.  There are a lot of clothing shops and eateries so it’s a nice walk..  We stopped by La Bottega Del Gelato (per Rick Steves) for a gelato break. Not sure if it was the gelato or how warm it was but this was the fastest melting gelato ever.

As we had the Leaning Tower in sight, we decide we should be well rested and fed before we took our obligatory pics with the tower.  It really looks a lot more impressive than I had expected. Per Rick Steves, we eat pizzas at Pizzeria La Buca which is right across the street from the Leaning Tower.  Food was standard, service was legit. The Wi-Fi password is carbonara (we asked but didn’t understand the waiter at the time. But I just got it on 4sq).

After our lunch, we got at it.  We took hundreds of pics with the Tower (not shown here).  There were a lot of tourist but less than I expected (we’re entering October). The Leaning Tower was a fun thing to check off the list.  After about an hour (or 2), we took the LAM Rossa bus back to Pisa Centrale to save the 20 minute walk back.

Once we got back to the train station, we looked at the big boards with times and saw that a 4:30pm Pisa to Florence train was about to leave. We had bought our tickets earlier in the morning from a ticket machine.  You can use the ticket for any train if you haven’t validated (with the validation machine) or reserved seats.  So we jumped on the train and immediately it was full. I stood for about half way through the trip before seats opened up but it’s only ~1 hour to Florence.