Day 29

This morning we left La Spezia and headed for Pisa. The port that we were planning to stay at was a little ways up the Arno river in Pisa (which is very green and pretty shallow). Luckily we found the conspicuious entry point to the river and went up slowly to make sure that the water was deep enough for a boat our size. There were a few points on the river where wire lines run overhead (used for fishing nets) and it was quite a challenge crossing under these. For some of the lower lines we had to be in just the right spot of the river to make it under, and even then our VHF antanea had to bend to clear the wire.

We kept moving up the river and found what we thought looked like the closest thing to a guest dock area (even though it was a lot smaller than usual). We docked the boat and shortly after a man came walking down the dock to see what we were up to. He told us that we weren't exactly in the right spot. He was really nice and helped us try to find a place to stay. He called around for us and even took Bec and Dad in his car over to some other areas in the port, and finally found a private dock that his friend owned that he said we could stay at for two nights. He rode on our boat with us over to his friend's dock, and just as we were pulling into this spot one of the slime lines from a boat next to us caught on our engine and stopped the propeller. About five Italian guys quickly came out of nowhere to our rescue. They helped us keep the boat from drifing while dad got on his scuba mask and jumped into the dark green water to try to cut the line from the propeller. After a few tries dad finally cut the line free, and they helped us get the lines re-tied and out boat docked in the right place.

This little ordeal set us back a little but we decided to go into town anyway and see as much as we could in what was left of our day.

We hopped on a bus



and headed straight for the Field of Miracles where the famous leaning tower is.









These kind of photos go on all day long in front of the tower. It's pretty entertaining to watch the never ending amount of people doing similar poses.