We didn't know how to get from the station to the Leaning Tower, so we just sort of wandered through the town. It was quiet, being around 8:30 in the morning, and we ended up over by the Tower miraculously.
It really leans. Like a lot. Like how I was impressed with the size of David, I was surprised by how much it truly does lean. Pretty crazy. We took our standard 'holding up the tower, pushing the tower over, leaning on the tower' shots. They didn't turn out so good.
We went to get tickets to climb up it, and we had to wait about an hour to so we went to a small restaurant outside the tower and got some lunch. I had a good marghreta pizza while Mary had good gnocci. We got to look at the tower the whole time we ate, another really awesome location I ate at.
We climbed up the narrow, worn stairs to the top. I kept thinking of how Gallileo climbed the same steps. The most amazing part was that at times we were walking uphill, and other downhill. Crazy.
The view from the top was great and you could see how one side was higher than the other. We met a funny Scotish guy who took our picture and then they made us go down after a half-hour.
We walked back to the train station and had to wait for 30 minutes for the next train so we went and got gelato. I had pistachio and coconut. It was solid. Pisa is a nice place, more authentic feeling than Florence with real Italians wandering around. Sure the tower is very touristy, but otherwise it's great. This was Mary's favorite place up to now.
The train ride was nice, going past a bunch of mountains. Unfortunatley we were supposed to get off at La Speza Centrale, but we got off at the La Speza stop before it, so we had to hang around outside for twenty minutes.
When we got to La Speza, the train was an hour away and delayed for twenty minutes. We finally got to Riomaggio around 3:30.
Since Cinque Terre was a national park, we had to pay an entrance fee, but it was worth it. The walk is along the rocky cliffs overlooking the water that connects five villages together. The first 20 minutes of the walk were really easy and we got to the next town and wandered around it. It had small colourful houses built into the side of the cliff overlooking the water, really incredible. We wandered up into one of the mountains and came down by the water.
There were people swimming in a little cove. We decided to join them, me in my boxers and Mary in her tights and bra. Pretty funny. I went out and swam around in the chilly water for a while. It got super deep quick but with the mountains all around and the water incredibly blue, it was one of the coolest things I've done in Europe.
My boxers soaked through my pants on the walk back, but it was alright. We went to Carnegila and walked about for a few minutes. It was a pretty tiny town. We started back into our walk, this time much more woodsy. We saw a sign for a beach through a little path and decided to go for it. When I saw ropes leading down, I said I don't do ropes (if anyone remembers Half Dome) but Mary really wanted to do it, so I grudgingly went along. We ran into a man who said it was dangerous but nice, and it was. Very steep and some tricky narrow steps. I was more worried about not dying than enjoying it.
We got down to the rocky beach and saw three naked people. It was a nude beach. Although most people were in bathing suits. Crazy.
We put our feet in the water, which was great. We decided to get up to Vernazza so Mary went and asked the naked people how it. Pretty funny. They said it was a 10 minute climb and a half hour walk.
So they lied. Turns out the route we took we had to literal scale the side of a cliff. I'm talking like climbing vertical rocks and dirt walls, all while going through an Indiana Jones forest. It was miserable. We were sweaty, dirty, and scratched up all over. But after an hour of climbing, we reached the top. It was kinda cool in retrospect, but mostly not. I'm glad I did it and came out alright.
We walked toward Vernazza, coming across a little bar and thinking it was the town. It wasn't We had about 45 minutes to go from there. When we finally got into town we went to look at the train times and decided to leave around 9:30.
We walked around the really nice little town and stopped for dinner at a outdoor restaurant. We had a great Caprese salad, and I had some very good spaghetti (the tomato sauce really made it) while Mary had equally good ravioli with walnut sauce. This was one of the best places we ate at so far.
We got some gelato at a cool old place and I had chocolate, banana, Nutella, blueberry, and cream. Really good. We took it over to the water and sat for a while before going to the train station.
We got on the wrong train and went in the wrong direction for two stops before waiting for 40 minutes to catch the right train back. We got to La Speza and had to wait another 50 minutes for a train to Pisa.
We went and sat down in a little room (like how the baseball players used to travel) and when the lady came by for tickets we sat nervously. We were definitely not supposed to be in there apparently and since we didn't have the right tickets anyways when she ducked out we left too. We only had ten minutes to Pisa so we stood.
There was a bus to Florence that we ran over to catch since the next train wouldn't get us there until 5. We were pretty nervous about our tickets working but they did. Huge relief. I stayed up most the ride, it was interesting to be on the Italian highway. They have gas stations off the side of the highway, kinda crazy.
We finally got back to our hostel around 3 and went to sleep, tired and sore. It was a pretty awesome day though.
No comments:
Post a Comment