Previously Recorded

(written in Pisa 3/11/13)

I suppose everybody has a “bucket list,” although to be honest I hate that term. Mine includes visiting several places, mostly because I can’t believe they’re real until I see them for myself. Today, I was able to check another of those locations off my list, but as usual with such idealistic goals, it didn’t turn out exactly the way I’d imagined.

We got up early, loaded our faithful tour bus, and headed out for a short trip (read: two hours) to Pisa. The weather started out totally foul, rainy and cold complete with spectacular displays of lightning popping the mountain tops. The nearer we came to Pisa, however, the brighter the day became, and by the time we arrived at the bus parking lot, clear, brilliant sun had emerged to bathe the scene before us. We stepped out, stretched and sighed, and were immediately attacked by umbrella vendors.

I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else I’ve been. There must have been fifteen guys with cheap umbrellas and knock-off RayBans just waiting for each bus of tourists to arrive. Then, like a flock of vultures with a fresh kill handy, they would converge. Even if you had an umbrella in hand, they tried to sell you an umbrella.

They were simply everywhere. It became a running joke. One of the guys said, “I’m kind of afraid to go into the bathroom. I’m scared some guy is going to pop out and ask me if I want to buy some toilet tissue.” And really, I’m not sure this was an absurd notion….

We braved the gauntlet and got to the square of Pisa. It was lovely. I have seen pictures of the tower all my life, but for some reason, I never noticed how oddly delicate and lovely it really is. I took about a million photographs, including the ubiquitous holding-up-the-tower one, and sat for a while just looking up at it. Our guide told us a lot about the restoration efforts over the centuries, and I had even more respect for the structure that Pisa just refuses to let fall. There is something admirable about that kind of stubbornness to me.

Another part of our tour was inside the cathedral for which the Tower serves as a bell tower. It was simple, austere, and lovely. The Pisan Romanesque style is simpler, cleaner, and although the Florentine Gothic is beautiful, something about the Moorish arches inside this Pisa church pleased me. We walked through and saw wonder everywhere. One part of the church held a saint in his green-marble-and-glass coffin. Although I have taught Chaucer for years and explained people coming to Canterbury to worship the remains of St. Thomas a Beckett each time, I have never actually seen what I couldn’t help thinking of as a “saint in a box.” I took pictures of him to show next time I teach Chaucer.

As unexpected as all that was, the real shocker of the day came when we left the cathedral. One hundred days before the final exam for high school students, kids from all around Tuscany gather in Pisa to walk around the monuments for luck. Actually, what they do is mass up, fill the area, drink, fight, smoke, “get to know each other well,” grope perfect strangers, and play football. Enter American tour group us to this mix.

Yeah. It was like that.

In the time it took us to cross from the cathedral to its baptistery, we were separated numerous times, inspected physically by people we didn’t know, yelled at, invited to frolic, greeted in broken English, jostled, and generally roughed up. By the time we got from the baptistery to the exit, some fool had put his hands on me without written permission (a thing that will get you killed), and one of the college girls on our trip had been surrounded by a horde of five guys who proceeded to be altogether too free with their hands.

We made it out and got to the bus stop only to be assailed by that location’s team of intrepid umbrella sellers. They were the most persistent of any we were to encounter. At one point, all of us were chorusing “NO! NO!” every time they offered an umbrella. They remained undaunted, circling us until the blessed arrival of public transportation.

Even though elements I had not expected were introduced, nothing can take away the beauty of Pisa. Maybe the umbrella men and the idiot teenagers somehow make it even better. We all survived. We all got to see and enjoy the sights. We have a tale to take away. It truly was a “bucket list” moment, memorable in every way.