Italy 2007, Day 6

Italy 2007: Day 6

News of the day:  Every trip I have some sort of accident–Today I dropped the 24-70mm.  Call it the lack of sleep, the exertion of climbing basilica stairs or the limoncello, but here I was in the La Spezia train station and the camera slipped out of my hand.  Thankfully it hit my toe and then the hood landed on the ground, falling only a total of two feet.  Disaster averted.  Damn my foot hurts.

This morning was not much better than yesterday.  Still raining, we went to the train station and took a train to Pisa, home of the famed tower.  Some of us decided to climb the tower, laughing off the small 200-plus steps in comparison to our previous 464-step Florence Duomo climb.

Climbing the tower is unusual, the steps and the inclination of the tower make you feel like you are falling forward or just walking normally at some points.  Eventually getting to the top, you are rewarded with a view of the surrounding area, which, given the weather wasn’t so interesting.

By the time we left the sun was coming out, making for some good photos.  Most people really only come to Pisa for the leaning tower, so we got back onto the train and continued to La Spezia, at the foot of the famed Cinque Terre or “Five Lands”.

Tonight we traveled to the furthest of the Cinque Terre towns, Monterosso, which is about 20 minutes by train from La Spezia, where we are staying.  We walked along the stunning beach, staring out into the Mediterrean.  One of the specialties of Cinque Terre is a drink called Limoncello, which is a lemon liqueur.  It is has something like 30% alcohol content and tastes like Lemon Meringue pie filling, mixed with booze.  Pretty powerful.  The first sip had a burning sensation, but the subsequent ones were much smoother.  It has a unique, sweet taste.  The bunch of us sat around the streets of Monterosso drinking this in what one of our group termed “NyQuil cups”.  At dinner, being a coastal town, I had seafood with pasta, my ravioli came with two large langoustines still in shell.  Others had pasta of squid ink and a paella of seafood with mussels and spaghetti noodles.

Tomorrow our plan is to hike the five towns starting at Monterosso and back into La Spezia.  It is supposed to be 9 km, taking five to six hours, apparently fueled by espresso and limoncello along the way.