First, a quick apology to our devoted readers - we haven't been able to blog much due to pretty bad internet connections in both Capri and Vernazza.
That being said, we wrapped up Rome Monday morning and were quite sad to leave. Rome stunned us with its beauty and realness. So much action on every street, definitely a city to visit again for a much longer time. We were also quite close to the "political manifestation" (as one Italian explained it to us) which occured in Rome near the Colosseum (actually took place on our hotel's street) and saw much of the post-demonstration destruction (cars reduced to burnt cinders, ATMs and store fronts smashed up, etc) and even heard a few explosions during. We were in the heat of the battle and almost jumped right into express our own anger - VIVA ROMA!
From Rome we took a train and a nice little ferry to Capri. This island is breathtakingly gorgeous, certainly one of the most naturally beautiful places either of us has ever visited. In our two days there, we took a private boat tour around the perimeter of the island (we're engaged, it was incredibly romantic and actually gave us a great perspective on what this island has to offer), put in a total of 15 miles of hiking (on some brutally hilly trails which were, once again, breathtaking) and partook in lots of wandering and exploring the two towns of Capri.
Next we trained to Vernazza, one of Cinque Terre's five tucked away towns. Everything slows down in the Cinque Terre, and we pretty much let it happen to us as well. Each of these towns is built into a mini-bay and the homes and buildings are built into the rocks, stacked on top of each other in a million different colors. One or two main streets wind through each town where everyone (tourists and locals alike) gathers. We had a cozy little room in our town of Vernazza (built by the hands of the man who rented it to us for our two day stay) and used every second of our time there to explore the trails linking the five towns, drink wine, eat whenever we pleased and take it all in. It's a bit strange that a group of towns like this actually exists, it's almost like a scene out of a movie. But its very real and we were a glad to be able to enjoy it during a part of the year when the crowds were much less than usual. There was a great sighting of fitness too - on one of the hikes we took between two of the cities of Cinque Terre, we saw one of the trail booth attendents (who are supposed to check to see if you have a hiking pass) doing step ups on a bench. As we approached, instead of stopping and attending to our needs, he continued working out and performed his job admirably. This might have gone unnoticed to a civilian, but not to the OTTC's Treasurer of Fitness. An honorary member of the OTTC was found this day.
We're now wrapping up a brief side trip to Pisa, which was meant to only be a three hour stopover but warped into a eight hour one due to a planned strike by TrenItalia (how polite of them). So, with nowhere to check our bags and an unplanned stopover in Pisa, we hauled our bags to the Field of Miracles (where the leaning tower and several other incredibly old (and under appreciated) structures are located. It was interesting and we had a perfect day of weather, but really nothing to write home about. We mostly people watched, planned our days to come in Florence and relaxed on the lawn next to the tower. Also of note, as we approached the Field of Miracles, we noticed a finish line banner and a few more subtle signs that an organized celebration of fitness may be occuring. We quickly figured out that, as we thought, a 12k road race was happening in the streets of Pisa today, culminating a mere 50m from the leaning tower and requiring that the hundreds of people swarming the street adjacent to the field to be cleared as the runners streamed through. We hoped for an epic swarm of runners plowing through all of the tourists, but we were informed that there were only 450 runners. Lame. There was actually a pretty legit winner in the race too - some guy wearing a Brooks jersey rocked a 38:25 final time weaving through all of those people, another honorary member of the OTTC.
That's pretty much everything. Bye.
Dan and Allie
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