Well, this sure is embarrassing. Its been close to a month since my last post? Its unbelievable how quickly the time goes. I guess that's just a small illustration of how quickly this last portion of the trip has seemed to go. I will do my best to give an adequate (albeit brief) overview of the main happenings of July.
I'll start with our 3 day trip to Pisa and Cinque Terre. We first went to Pisa to see, well I'm sure you can guess at least one of the attractions. Yes, the leaning tower of Pisa. It was there, and it sure was leaning. Evidently they have done enough corrections to where it will not continue to lean closer to falling, but they left it leaning since it is obviously the largest source of income for the city of Pisa.
Also while in Pisa, we saw the main Cathedral and the Baptistery. The Baptistery was surprisingly cool because it had phenomenal acoustics. They did a demonstration, and a woman stood in the center and would sing a series of long notes, and the sound continued to long that it sounded as if there were multiple people singing harmony. Pretty cool.
About 6 of us decided to make our trip to Pisa even cooler by renting Segways. (If you are unaware, Segways are those devices that have two wheels that automatically corrects your balance, and you operate it by leaning forward of backwards). For 20 euros, we got to tour around the city of Pisa for an hour. It was a great way to see the entire city of the main beaten path, and plus the Segways were just plain cool.
After Pisa, we took a train to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a series of 5 (cinque) towns along the cost that are all placed right on the edge of mountains and cliffs (terre means earth). There is a single trail that connects the five towns, and they are very small, colorful, and picturesque. We stayed in the fourth town, Vernazza. On the second day, we hopped on a quick train to the first town and hiked our way all the way down the trail back to Vernazza. Afterwards, most of us jumped back on another train to the fifth town, Monterosso, to go to the beach (Monterosso is the only town that really has a beachfront).
On our last day, there was a train strike which messed up our plans for travelling home. Instead of hoping on whatever train we wanted, we had to wait for a ferry at 4 to take us to a place we could catch a charter bus. I took advantage of this extra time, and decided to hike the final part of the trail: from Vernazza to Monterosso (which I had to hike back to Vernazza too since the trains weren't running). This proved to be one of the best things I did all week. The view from the trail was stunning and it was a beautiful, fun, challenging trail. In the middle was this nice little waterfall and brook in the shade, which I relaxed in going both ways.
I decided to listen to worship music on my iPod while hiking, and had some great moments basking in the wonderful creation of the Creative Creator. I should also mention that both nights we spent in Cinque Terre, there was a group of us that went down to the dock and sang praise songs for a long time under the stars.
It proved to be a great, fun, upifting, and relaxing three days.
(More to come soon, I PROMISE).
Ciao!
Taylor
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