I’ve never seen so many people crowed around one structure. All we wanted was a picture “holding it up”; no one imagined that it would be so difficult.
When I went to Italy my senior year of high school one of our stops was at the Tower of Pisa, or more commonly known as, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was one of the most looked forward to stops on our two week excursion throughout Italy. We had seen church upon church counting down the days until it was time to stop in Pisa, Italy.
Our bus driver let us off about a mile away from the famous structure. As we pulled into the parking lot we were greeted by about ten other buses as big as ours. Immediately we knew that we were about to encounter a few hundred other tourists.
We had 45 minutes to explore the tower and its surroundings. We thought that this would be more than enough time, we were wrong. It turned out that we actually could have used more time due to how long it took to get to the base of the structure for a picture.
Every tourist wants a picture in the same spot, the spot where you are right underneath the tower with it leaning towards you. If you are in this spot holding your hands out in front of you it will look like you are holding up the tower in your picture.
The closer you get to the tower the denser the crowd gets. We all held hands to form a line. This way we would not get separated in the crowd and would make it to our final destination all together. This method of getting through the crowd was also ideal because the first person was able to create a path for the rest of us. With a little pushing and shoving the crowd parted ways for us like Red Sea parted for Moses.
It took about 40 minutes to push through all of other tourists to get to the best spot to take a picture. Right after everyone got their desired picture we had to all sprint back to the bus. If you were around you would have questioned if we were a herd of 45 students or a herd of 45 wild horses.
