Greetings from Cinque Terra, Italy! I've put a lot of miles in since my last update. The best of those miles was between Naples and Florence when the train goes 300 kph (roughly 186 mph). Pretty awesome especially with Naples in the rearview mirror.
My first stop after Rome was in Sorrento, Italy. Sorrento is a coastal town on the Mediterranean Sea. There aren't really any beaches here, because the majority of the town sits atop high cliffs over the water. The views are amazing, and I can see Naples, Mount Vesuvius, and Pompeii across the bay. I picked Sorrento mainly because I wanted to visit Pompeii, and I did not want to stay in Naples. Naples is a pretty disgusting place. There's constant trash strikes, tons of gypsies, and pretty much everyone ignores all laws. You would think that as a libertarian it would be a dream come true. Not so.
Ever since I studied Pompeii in school I have wanted to go. For those unaware, Pompeii was a town that was buried almost 2,000 years ago by volcanic ash and pumice from a massive eruption at Mount Vesuvius. The initial eruption "rained" 2-3 meters of ash on the city in a matter of hours, and killed people either by collapsing their homes on them or through asphyxiation from the toxic fumes. After everyone died, Vesuvius further buried the town under another 3 meters of ash and pumice. For you English measurements people, that's roughly 18 feet of ash! The result was that Pompeii went undiscovered for centuries, and when it finally was discovered, everything was well preserved because of all that ash. Enough of the history lesson. Pompeii was a huge city and I greatly underestimated the size of it when I first arrived. The coolest thing about Pompeii is that since everything is so well preserved, your imagination runs wild thinking about the daily activities of ancient Pompeiians. My favorite sites within Pompeii were the amphitheater (seating capacity of 20,000), the restaurant (where Pompeiians would gather for food and socializing), the theater, and the brothel; with it's colorful "artwork."
I left Sorrento the day after Pompeii for Lucca, Italy. Lucca is in the heart of Tuscany and Italian wine country. Aside from world renowned wine, the city features 3 sets of city walls which aren't only really cool, but also help keep traffic to minimum. After being in Rome, that was a pleasant surprise. The city center features cool shopping, tight, picturesque Italian streets, and cafés. The old city walls have been turned into walking paths and parks which provide a great opportunity to rent a bike and ride around them; which I took full advantage of. Overall, Lucca was nice, relaxing, laid back, and far less touristy than most other places in Tuscany.
After leaving Lucca, I made my way to Monterosso, Italy which is in an area known as Cinque Terra. Cinque Terra, a UNESCO site, is made up of five (duh) cities on the northwestern Italian coast with unrivaled views, unbelievable hiking, and no cars (walking is the only method of transportation). My friends and I stayed at an agriturismo where the farm produces grapes for wine, olives for oil, lemons for lemoncello, and various other fruits. Upon arrival, we quickly noticed that our accommodations had no heat. That's not uncommon in Europe, but we knew it was going to be cold the 3 nights we were there. Luckily, we had a fire place so my buddy Brad and I quickly focused our attention on starting a fire (mostly because all real men love playing with fire). Starting this fire was a headache. First, we had no matches and no lighter so we resorted to lighting magazines (and later cardboard) on fire using the gas stove in the kitchen and running through the dining room to the fireplace. Second, we had no way of knowing whether or not the flue was open, so after filling the room with smoke several times, we learned that smoke in the room means the flue is closed. Third, we had limited wood so we found ourselves hiking through the farm looking for wood (I wish I could tell you we Paul Bunyaned a tree but we found wood pretty easily). Even though it was a headache at the time, it was a pretty hilarious adventure I'm retrospect.
Our first full day in Cinque Terra, we decided to hike the trail from Monterosso to Reggiomare. It's about a five hour hike or so we thought. Only one of the four trails we had to take was officially open due to heavy rain. The first two trails we took were in good shape, but halfway through the third leg, we got stuck because the mountain had washed out creating a landslide. It was a big disappointment to me to have hiked roughly 4/5 of the way only to get stuck at the end, but it was still a fun, beautiful, and tiresomely good time!
Our final day in Cinque Terra was Thanksgiving! Even though I couldn't be home with my family, there's far worse places to spend the holiday then Monterosso. My friends and I had decided previously that we were going to try our hardest to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving meal. This was not an easy task. We were able to find potatoes, green beans, desert, and even substitute chestnuts (which we roasted on the fire of course) with relative ease, but finding turkey was turning out to be a huge problem. We had no oven and Cinque Terra has tiny grocery stores, so we were getting close to abandoning hope in this wild turkey chase and settling for a turkey substitute or an Italian Thanksgiving meal of pasta. As luck would have it, there was a market going on in town Thursday morning and of all things, there was a guy who had 3 precooked turkeys waiting when we arrived. It was like manna from Heaven. We quickly snatched it up along with a few other things and later that evening we all enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving meal.
Cinque Terra was amazing and now my favorite place I've been on the trip. Lucca was worth a days time and Pompeii as well.
Ching ching!
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