*POST UPDATED OCTOBER 2026.
Hello, sweet friends! Happy Wednesday! I hope this post finds you warm, cozy, and in the mood for a spot of armchair travelling! I’m here today to share a long overdue guide with you: Two Unexpected Yet Wonderful Days in Pisa, Italy. A bit of a mouthful, perhaps, but I genuinely couldn’t think of a more accurate description of our time in Pisa. See, we hadn’t actually planned to spend two days in Pisa, wonderful or not. We’d only intended to spend about 5-hours exploring the city before catching a flight back to Dublin in the evening. Until! Yes, there’s an until. See, that was the plan, until frosty weather in Dublin cancelled our flight & kept us stranded in Italy for two days until the next one. Get what I mean by unexpected?
I think back on it all very favorably now, but at the time it was a big hell-ish nightmare. We were stuck in the airport for many many hours waiting for any information about what we should do or where we should go etc. However! Once our questions were answered, our tickets were transferred, and our accommodation for the night was sorted, it dawned on us how lucky we were. Two extra days in our favourite country, totally out of our control?! Yes! please! What’s better, is that we’d basically gotten all of our tourist-ing over & done with on our first day, meaning our newfound additional days were so chilled out & easy going! We wandered the streets, explored cute nooks & crannies, and got to experience the city like locals. It was so wonderful!
As usual, there’s a whole bunch of helpful information & recommendations listed below. Informational tidbits include useful things to know before visiting, how to get there, and some fun facts. Recommendations cover where to stay, grab a coffee, eat lunch + dinner, stop in for a drink, and where to tourist.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
before you visit & fun facts
Just a few things to keep in mind if you’re thinking about visiting Pisa, with a small handful of fun facts thrown in for good measure. Fun facts for the win!
honestly, my main ‘before you visit’ top tip for Pisa would be to have an open mind. Before we visited, we’d heard so many people say the city was nothing special and that you could see it in a couple hours – but that’s just not true! We both fell head-over-heels for the city, and I’m honestly kicking myself that I’d never visited earlier! The city is so much more than the Leaning Tower!
the weather was very pleasingly mild when we visited in mid-December, with temperatures ranging from 8°C - 16°C. It was a bit drizzly and rainy at times, but nothing too dramatic. However! Because it wasn’t actually that cold, we encountered a mosquito in our hotel room – can you even believe it? Mosquitos in December! Wild.
the Leaning Tower of Pisa attracts over 5-million(!) visitors each year, making it one of the top three attractions in Italy. Even though we visited in the off-season, the city was still a little busy at times. Just something to keep in mind if you’re thinking of visiting in the middle of summer!
the name Pisa actually comes from a Greek word meaning ‘marshy land’. Needless to say, the marshy nature of the area has resulted in many a crooked structure! Yes, this includes the Leaning Tower we all know and love, but there’s two other wonky towers dotted across the city!
home to one of the oldest universities in Europe, Pisa is a vibrant student town. Student towns are wonderful budget spots to travel to because it usually guarantees competitively priced restaurants/bars, and a great buzzy vibe to the place.
Pisa is the birthplace of Galileo Galilei, the famous astronomer, physicist, mathematician, and philosopher!
getting there
We actually flew into Pisa and headed straight out of the city on a night bus into Florence. Three days later, we then returned to Pisa via a high speed Frecciarossa train. However, because of the aforementioned flight chaos, we became very well acquainted with the different ways of getting into the city. Details below!
we flew direct from Dublin (DUB) to Pisa (PSA) with Ryanair. On average, the flight time takes around 2.5-hours, and the views as you’re coming in to land are beautiful. Due to heavy fog on the night we landed, we experienced two aborted landings/go-arounds before finally touching down, which added an extra 40-minutes to our journey.
to get into the city centre, we took the Pisa Mover shuttle to Pisa Centrale train station. The shuttle departs from a tiny station just outside the airport terminal, and the journey takes about 5-minutes. At the time of our visit, the tickets cost €5 per person, and we purchased them from the machine on the platform. The Pisa Mover runs from 6am-12am daily, and I believe they depart every 5-8 minutes. More information can be found here. Alternatively, if you were so inclined, the walk from the airport into the centre of town would only take around 40-minutes!
if you’re coming to the city from elsewhere in Italy, Pisa Centrale train station is very well connected. There’s an average of 45-trains running between Florence & Pisa every single day, with 3-4 departing each hour. The journey takes around 1-hour and is largely inexpensive – our tickets were €8.90 each.