Pisa & Portofino

I just got back from my weekend trip to Pisa and Portofino with friends. We left on Friday afternoon from the Genoa train station...two hours later than expected. (We missed our first train because it switched platforms and no announcement was made in English!) In Pisa, we saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Duomo. It was very surreal to actually see the Leaning Tower after seeing so many pictures of it, and especially since the first time we saw it was Friday night when the area around it was completely deserted. I expected Pisa to be a much bigger city than it was; it was actually relatively small and there wasn't much to do aside from seing the "Field of Miracles" (with the tower and the Duomo and baptistery). We still had a really great weekend just wandering around the city and hanging out though. The hostel westayed at in Pisa was interesting. It was a clean, safe, cheap place to say, but all 6 of us were in one small room with six miniature-sixed twin beds, lined up in a row. On Saturday, we went up to the top of the tower. You could actually feel the slant when you were on the top and when you were walking up the stairs. It was bizarre. One funny thing that happened while we were at the tower was that a group of Italian teenage boys came up my friends and I and asked, "Photo?" We thought that they wanted us to take a picture for them, so we agreed, but then they stood next to us and started snapping pictures with us. (We tend to draw a lot of attention in Genoa too, since there are hardly any Americans. We've walked past an elementary school playground several times, and the kids always run over and stare at us. )

Today, we took a train from Pisa to Portofino. Portofino is a resort town, and it was absolutely gorgeous, but is pretty much deserted during the winter. Mostly all the shops and restaurants were boarded up. I would love to go back on a sunny, summer day. Since everything was closed, we spent our time in Portofino hiking up to the castle and lighthouse to see amazing views. Unfortunately, we had all our luggage from the weekend on us (no lockers in the train station), so we had to do the hike with an extra 30 pounds on us. We got back this evening and are exhausted. (Today alone, we took 2 train rides and 4 buses.) Well, I guess I should get some homework done after being gone all weekend. Hope all is well back home!