In the morning of our fourth day in Florence, each of us prepared for what we thought would be a long day. We had been told that we would be embarking on a 5-6 mile hike accros Florence in order to see as many churches as possible. At our morning meeting, John, one of our leaders, reminded us of our busy schedule but then concluded his speech with an 'option'. We could either partake in the long trek, or we could spend the day at the beach and then visit the leaning tower of Pisa. We soon discovered that the 'tough' schedule had only been a trick played on us by our leaders.
We drove 1.5 hours to get to a beautiful beach where we met the kids on the Abbey Road Florence program. After the beach we then headed to Pisa. When we got off the bus I immediately recognized the tower because I had seen it featured many times on the wall of my favorite Italian restaurant back in NYC. It definitely has a tilt and we spent a good amount of time taking pictures where we pretended to push the tower back to its upright position.
We did not get to climb to the top of the tower but instead, we went into the baptistry that stands nearby. The building makes the most beautiful echoes, and at one point the gaurd inside the building stood in the center and sang a few notes as a demonstration of how loud and beautiful a voice can sound inside the strucutre. It was truly an amazing thing to witness.
