four o'clock in the afternoon
Olives and lemon trees grew beyond it and dropped over , and it was always dipping in the sunlight to show us the roses and the shady walks of the villas inside , white and remote ; now and then we saw the pillared end of a verandah or a plaster Neptune ruling a restricted fountain area . Out of the other window stretched the blue Gulf of Genoa all becalmed and smiling , with freakish little points and headlines , and here and there the white blossom of a sail . The Senator counted eighty tunnels -- he wants that fact mentioned too -- some of them so short that it was like shutting one 's eyes for an instant on the olives and the sea . Nevertheless it was an idyllic journey , and at four o'clock in the afternoon we saw the Leaning Tower from afar , describing the precise angle that it does in the illustrated geographies . Momma was charmed to recognise it , she blew it a kiss of adulation and acclaim , while we yet wound about among the environs , and hailed it `` Pisa ! '' It was as if she bowed to a celebrity , with the homage due . What the Senator called our attention to as we drove to the hotel was the conspicuous part in municipal politics played by that little old brown river Arno .