For the final day of my waterborne adventure, I booked a double-header: the leaning tower in the morning, the artistic font of Italy in the afternoon.

Pisa surprised me. Both less and more solitary than I expected, the infamous tower presides over three other structures on the Piazza del Duomo, each striking in its own right: a cathedral, a baptistry and a cemetery. Unlike every other site I had visited so far, however, that was it – no town, no shops, just a field of green and enterprising vendors.

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