We’ve spent the last two days here in Cinque Terre, “the five towns,” enjoying incredible scenery, delicious food, and demanding hikes up and down and down and up the cliff side trails that connects them all together. Despite the searing hot days, blood sucking bugs and being dirty and grimy at the end of each day, it has been so worth it. This photo is of Manarola, half an hour after sunset.
Day trip to the walled town of Lucca, one of the best preserved city walls in the world. It encircles the town 4km around, and the best part is that you can walk on top of it on wide paved walkways that are suitable for bicycling, roller skating and even horse carriage rides! With plenty of trees to provide shade and many benches to rest, it is a very popular place for tourists and locals alike at all times of the day. Walking the wall is not the only attraction, as the town also boasts some 100 churches, a bell tower that features trees at the top and of course lots of pedestrian-only passages that lead to numerous dining spots to eat, drink, hang out and people watch. We really enjoyed all the green space that this town offered after so many days in the urban concrete jungles of Rome and Firenze.
Long day enjoying the countryside of Tuscany and visiting three beautiful towns — Siena, San Gimignano and Pisa. Our guide stated that this has been the hottest week of weather in the last fifty years, so after melting in 41 degree heat all day long, we were looking forward to our hotel in Pisa and taking showers to freshen up and get rid of that sweaty, sticky feeling. We are staying at a hotel near the train station, Hotel La Pace. It’s a little worn and it appears to have been a grand hotel back in the day. TripAdvisor reviews are positive and it has what we need — location, WiFi, breakfast in the morning and a reasonable rate. What it doesn’t have, however, is a fully enclosed and watertight shower area.
It is a standard bath tub, one that you would find in any American home. But instead of a fixed shower head, it has one of those hand held adjustable shower heads, propped up in the corner of the tub. And instead of a shower curtain, it has a half glass enclosure that has hinges and can swing in and out. Unfortunately in order for it to swing, there is no adhesion between the top of the tub and the wall. So no caulking, just a gap for water to find its way through. And unfortunately, Lisa thought she was doing the right thing by pointing the shower head from the corner to the other corner towards the glass enclosure, so that the spray wouldn’t jump out of the exposed part of the shower/tub. Smart move, but in the this situation, it backfired because the half the spray went down the drain and the other half just went underneath and to the side of the swinging glass door, and onto the floor.
When her shower was finished, I heard Lisa yell a “Oh No.” I got up from the desk and walked over to the bathroom … only to find a lot of water had seeped from the bathroom door and into our room hallway between the door and sleeping area. I attempted to fjord the waters in the bathroom to fetch the rest of the towels and to start mopping up, but there was just too much water in the bathroom. That meant I needed to get more towels. And so I started towards the door to go down to reception, but when I opened it… water had infiltrated into the hotel hallway and down towards the elevator and stairs!! Okay, this was much more serious than I thought. I raced down to reception, informed the front desk (after waiting a couple minutes for him to finish serving other guests) and he said that he’d send someone up with more towels. Back up to the room I went, waiting outside in the hallway for the towels. While waiting, the door opposite ours in the hallway opened up and a lady came out wondering what the hell was going on — water was all over the floor in her room as well! I explained as best I could what happened — she was not very forgiving — and she headed downstairs to tell reception to double their time for the towels and she needed a drink from all of this.
A short while later, I heard footsteps coming up and another lady appeared and I warned her to be careful about the water. Her eyes got big and she immediately got on her cellphone, calling the owner and for additional assistance. The hotel maintenance guy followed thereafter, with towels, bed sheets, shower mats and whatever else they could come up with to soak up all the water. Thirty minutes after the discovery of the escaped water, our ordeal was over. A mop bucket and more towels appeared and the lady in room 223 was taken care of. We received new towels and an extra few to finish drying off the floors. Lisa felt pretty bad about the situation and all that it caused. Some good lessons have come from this:
For now, this particular tale is done. Or so I think. For it is now time for me to take my shower…
We took a day trip from Florence to Bologna, which is considered by many to be the culinary capital of Italy. We rode the “slow” train because it was slightly cheaper, leaving at 8:30am and arriving just before 10:00am. With some suggestions from an old friend, some guidance from my Lonely Planet Italy book, and advice from a few internet sites, we made the most of our day. Well, we tried. It hit a high of 41 C, which converts to 105 degrees. Yikes! So we went pretty slowly all day long. What was interesting is that we didn’t find any public fountains at all in Bologna, so we actually had to buy some bottled water! Fortunately the town is known for their porticoes — basically, these are covered sidewalks. Which meant that we were mostly in the shade and it helped some with the heat, but we were dragging and felt bogged down with the heat and the fatigue. We spent the day walking around the historic center and visited a lot of different churches — at least ten by my count, including the fifth largest church in the world (well, by their literature anyways — it is in the top ten). We also had the opportunity to eat handmade tortellini and their famous tagliolini al ragù, which is a hearty meat sauce over noodles. We rode the bullet train on the return, with a journey of just about half an hour and we finished off our day with a visit to one of the highly rated gelaterias in Florence – Gelateria La Carraia. After our hot and thirsty day we choose the three scoop combination of Mixed Berry, Limone and Melon. Delish!
We walked up to Piazzale Michaelangelo for the views and the sunset…
