Pisa this, Pisa that (what else?)

This place is crawling with people just like us.  We did the usual, got the room, stowed the bags and explored the town.  We had got there early, having left Florence in the wee hours to avoid the crowds at the train station.  It was a good plan because when we got to the Tower area, where our hostel was, there was practically no one around.  Hence, this obvious but badly shot picture taken for posterity.  Original idea, wasn't it?

This was the same place about three hours later.

The site is impressive that's for sure.  All the buildings are out of whack though, when you look at the lines along the church shown, you see they stray away from horizontal but you have to be in a different place to see them.  From here all looks fine.

Now have a look at the distance difference between the arches and the horizontal line that separates the top third of the building to the bottom two thirds.  Admittedly I should have taken the photo from side on to really show how out the building actually is. The round building in front also has a lean...the base is sinking on one side as well, but harder to see.  The grand fiasco is the Leaning Tower itself...truly unbelievable that it still stands up.  We weren't interested in climbing it.

We took the obligatory photos and headed away to explore the city to the south by foot.  Pisa is old, grimy and not particularly beautiful, but the river Arno which flows through it gives the place a tawdry splendour and the history is so long it's not surprising the place is needful of a good scrub.

We walked about three hours or so and found the post office, a large building on a square that is undergoing some major works by the council.  We got in there and had to go through the motions that the locals do at the post office, of taking a numbered ticket and waiting for up to fifteen minutes for our number to come up at a  window specific to each  process of dealing with "Mail".  In my case I had a hand full of post cards to send home, to friends that love them and look forward to getting them, I'm told.  The woman in the window was comfortably settled in, moving through the motions with the superior air of one having to do this cumbersome job for these annoying people... a sleep walking petty official, weighing each envelope, taking at least two minutes to do each calculation on her computer, and glaring at me for any queries I made.  
Two of the post cards were not in envelopes which is not surprising for post cards, and she rejected them out of hand, shaking her head and pointing at them and sharply telling me in Italian that it just wasn't on.  I tried to indicate that perhaps she might put some envelopes around them and lets just get on with it, like we do in Oz.   The temperature was rising, I was trying to avoid having to get another number and wait another fifteen minutes to get the envelopes and start the process all over again, but in the Italian public service, things move in glacial slowness and you just don't do that sort of thing !!
I told her tersely that she was a very unhelpful and unfriendly woman!  She told me "no capiche" and get the hell out of here .." in Italian, and so I backed out of there telling her in a loud voice that she was an outrageous woman, this post office was a joke, etc. etc.  A loud, obnoxious foreigner telling them off.  So we left and only about three of my missives got stamped.  I tell you...its not easy using the post systems in these countries.  The letters are lucky to get home by the time we do anyway.  So.......
just read the blog will you???

And get in touch.

We were in Pisa for a day and a half and happy to be outta there.  We flew to Athens on Wednesday and arrived to a heat wave.