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Chris is getting a little sick of Italian food. We let him have McDonalds if he buys it himself. No problem. A few minutes later he emerges from the McDonalds in the train station with a Nove piece McNuggets de Pollo. |
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Tuesday is our day to travel to the coast. Our goal is to see the leaning tower of Pisa, and then spend the rest of the day in the Cinque Terre coastal towns. |
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There's a lot of renovation work going on around the tower. The lawn around the tower and church are beautiful. Here you can see the lead weights that are helping to keep the tower from toppling (above you can see the 9 year old boy that is helping to keep the tower from toppling). |
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From Pisa we catch the train to Le Spazia, from there we have one more
train to get to Cinque Terre. Now our day turns South. This train is amazingly
crowded. People are standing down the corridor that runs the length of each car.
We squeeze into the little space left packed around luggage stacking in the
corridor. We have to stand up for the next hour. When we get to Le Spazia, we find that we have to wait an hour before the next train to Cinque Terre. We wait. Then the train is delayed 15 minutes. 45 minutes. Canceled! We wait for the next train; another 45 minutes. Then it is delayed. 15 minutes, 45 minutes, canceled. Now it's 3pm. We read the detailed schedule and determine even if all the remaining trains are on time in and out of Cinque Terre, we would have only an hour in one town. And if a train is late - we could be stuck there. Disappointed, we bail. Back to Florence. We get back by 8pm and have dinner and go to bed. Much of the day wasted. |
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On the way back we see the hills from which Carrera marble is quarried. That's not snow up there. |
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