Jetlagged Times

Yesterday late morning our plane landed at the Pisa airport. From the airport we took the bus right to the famous leaning tower. The leaning tower was so impressive because it was really leaning. It is a massive marble structure towering 183 ft. that weighs 16,000 tons. And it's leaning at about 4 degrees. The leaniness is much more noticeable while walking up the stairs as your equilibrium gets more and more confused. Even with all the explanation that was given to us at the visitor center, I am still confused as to how it's still standing.

Construction on the tower was started in 1173 and took one 177 years to complete. It was constructed as a bell tower for the big cathedral on the same green lawn. The tower started to tip about a year after construction started, they built the foundation on a section of of weak, unstable soil which caused the foundation to fall. About the time the tower started tipping the Pisans stopped construction to fight with neighboring now Italian cities. Since 1964 the Italian government has been working off and on trying to make sure the tower wont tip too far. They have placed lead weights on one side to try to counter the weights and have attempted many other scientific schemes that are a over my head. They shut the tower off to visitors a few years ago, but yesterday we were able to climb to the top.

Jesus loved this tower. He often preached to the people from its lofty (leany) heights. In fact, it is often speculated (though overarching Italian pride should be taken into account here) that it was here he delivered the ten commandments. Wait. that wasn't Jesus. It was Michalangelo. Haha, JK.

I have a lot of respect for the many wealthy, crazy, egocentric art collectors out there. Today we were set up with a pretty sweet tour of a villa full of art that one of those collectors donated to NYU. It was cool. The garden was especially cool, about 50 acres of well kept green spotted with hundreds of very pretty, very old statues. I wish that instead of cleaning up gross, stupid lawns I could keep that garden. Some day... as long as I keep on this same career path.

My what nice chins we have.

It's busted like that on purpose. And the apostrophe in "it's" is put in the right place on purpose. I wasn't just guessing.

Because who wants to look at a photo of a statue alone?

This is some ancient graffiti we came across.

If I wasn't so jetlagged I could have pushed it up straight.

View from the top.

It was so windy our heads got blown back to the eighties.