It's the Leaning Tower of Piiiiiisa....

Before we left for Amsterdam on Friday, the entire group visited Pisa. The first thing we did is visited the Synogogue. This certain synogogue stood out to be in particular because it had a very home-like feel. When I went to use the bathroom, I passed through the kitchen and dining room area and it felt like the people who owned the synogogue lived right next to it. After this visit, we went to the graveyard which is just outside the walls of the city because the Jews were not buried inside of the city unlike Christians who liked to be buried in the church. On the way to the graveyard we passed the leaning tower of Pisa. It sure was leanin! The most hilarious part of seeing the Leaning Tower was walking by and seeing all the tourists standing on the grass taking pictures of themselves pretending to be holding the tower up. We looked and there must have been 30 or 40 people doing it all at once and they all looked ridiculous.
We had to enter through a gate to get into the grave yard. You could tell that it was very very ancient, especially when we were shown the older section because the grass had grown high. Of course there were about a thousand more mosquitoes than usual inside so we were all getting eaten alive. However, the tombstones themselves were beautiful and articulate. One of them had a piano on it because the woman played when she was alive. The graves varied from being very elaborate to being just a few words. Another interesting grave was one that they believed looked like a cross, and a day after they declared that, a tree right next to the grave fell on it, and shattered the peices. Next, we each did a grave rubbing with charcoal and paper. I felt incredibly wierd rubbing someones grave. I don't know if I would want someone doing that to my grave when I died. However, it came out very well and was a sort of memento from our visit. Another increddibly unique aspect of the graveyard was the building in the center where they used to wash the bodies and get them ready to be buried. It was really creepy to go into that room and see where that was done.