We arrive in Pisa on January 9 staying until Saturday. We have to be at the airport by 4.30am for our departure.
we would appreciate any input/advice about other places to stay outside of Pisa and places to visit using public transport for our short visit. We speak Italian.
Thank you for any information.

Lou Anne, you may want to visit this page on www.slowtrav.com: Pisa, More Than The Leaning Tower. Gloria also rents an apartment in Pisa, one of our SlowTrav favorites, Behind the Tower. You can also check out our Hotel Reviews for Tuscany and reviews for other vacation rentals here: Tuscany West Vacation Rentals

Oh and welcome to SlowTalk!

Lou Anne,

My wife and I just spent 2.5 days in Pisa - we have a new saying, "Piss on Pisa" - seemed a little dirty and unsafe - of our five trip to Italy now we tell people that we finally found somewhere in Italy we didn't like!!. For a break take a 25 minute train ride to Lucca (SP?). But expect much of the town to close between 11:00 and 3:00, and we didn't find much else to do but walk around the city wall (pretty nice, actually). I don't know what will be available to you in January, but at least the Pisa airport is nice....

Jim, what an unfortunate experience you had in Pisa.

It is too bad you didn't find the information Kim suggested above before your trip. Had you read it I am sure your experience would have been quite different.

There are less attractive areas in most cities, but there are few places that have nothing good to offer - we just have to find the right location.

Just for the record, I loved Pisa.

Elly

quote:

For a break take a 25 minute train ride to Lucca (SP?). But expect much of the town to close between 11:00 and 3:00, and we didn't find much else to do but walk around the city wall (pretty nice, actually).

We've been going to our summer home near Lucca for the last 12 years and still haven't run out of things to discover there.

If Pisa is not something that is unsafe. It is a very quiet city at all hours of the day and of the night. The area around the station is kind of run down and it is becoming the ethnic area of the city.

It's not for everybody, I am sorry you had a bad experience. Where were you staying?