Pizza in Pisa

So ummm... Pisa's cool. Really, it is actually really cool. The tower actually
leans... A LOT. Somehow this fact was still shocking to me upon arriving at the
tower plaza. After taking a million obnoxious pictures we realized all the
surrounding buildings are actually quite stunning. The Italians really knew how
to do it back then, well minus the fact that their most famous tower is about
to topple over. But hey any attention is good attention right....

We stayed at a great hostel literally across the street from the tower and must
have gotten the best deal in the entire city. It was a new hostel, only open 15
days so I think their prices were exceptionally low to get their business
started. We would walk to the tower plaza in the evenings once it cooled down
and it was a great place to hang out, draw or bring a picnic dinner or… EAT PIZZA
IN PISA!!!>

I was in Italy with my parents several years previously when we were driving by Pisa
and my dad, who is the king of annoying stereotypes and clichés, suddenly
exudes, “Hey guys, we are driving by Pisa, let’s go gets some pizza and eat it
in Pisa!!!” You can maybe imagine the sing song intonation with which he said
it that made both my mom and I want to vomit in our mouths. Needless to say we
did not go eat pizza in Pisa that day, much to my dad’s disappointment and to
this day we still give him a hard time about it. So in order to mock him even
more, we decided to fulfill his dream without him and eat pizza in Pisa and then
take a lot of picts for him. I know, I’m a jerk… However the pizza was
delicious.

Being in the plaza evoked a childlike lack of concern for what anyone else around you
thought. There was no shame. Suddenly we were all on the playground again and anything
goes. If it’s fun, do it. That was the rule of the game. People of all types
and ages were scattered there all day every day holding various awkward looking
poses of imaginary interactions with a human sized tower. No one could escape
the urge to do it. It didn’t matter how cool you were normally, at that moment the
only cool thing to do was push that tower over as a giant of perspective. Everyone
did it and everyone is still doing it.