Wait! Hold it, right there!

We have all seen them: silly photographs of smiling tourists "holding up" the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The end result tends to look like this, or even this. But have you ever wondered what people actually look like while they're in the throes of posing for this souvenir photograph?

When you arrive in Pisa, what's really strange (that is, once you have gotten past the seemingly impossible angle that the centuries-old masonry tower is leaning) is the inordinate amount of people standing around "holding up" air for the sake of this legendary photograph. Truthfully, they may be a bit more fun to look at than the skewed Campanile as they do their "no wait, a little more to the left" dance, occasionally in tandem with another person trying to topple the tower from the other direction.

I was not in Pisa long, really just long enough to see that, believe it or not, there is a tower there that leans! And I did not end up climbing the Campanile as I had hoped because of the admission fee. But I did spend some time in the beautiful Cathedral and the Baptistry. I actually find it a bit sad that the Campanile gets all the attention as a result of its faulty foundations, while the other two buildings, quite stunning in their own right, seem to lurk in the shadows.