June 12, 2008.
We left this morning for Pisa. This town was full of …. NOTHING. Except for the famous leaning tower of course. Pisa is a one-stop shop otherwise … just a normal town. It's as if they said, "Ok, that's enough. That'll bring 'em here." And stopped with the tower. We started by seeing the basilica, which was probably my favorite one we've seen so far. The ceiling was made of wood and it had tons of gold leafing so it was just really amazing to look at. 
And the paintings on the wall were added later so the colors are really vibrant and bright, and then there's a HUGE mural of Jesus on the rounded ceiling of the altar which was cool. Then we had some free time to take the STANDARD picture of holding up the leaning tower. Seriously. Like they should have little "stand here" footprints at all the various angled points where you can take it because there had to have been at least 300 Americans and 9934 Asians taking this picture. But alas, I took mine. When in Rome, right? After our sweet pics, we went up the tower with our group. It's about 7 stories high and is actually a bell tower so there's a huge bell at the top. Such a cool experience though. When you're at the top, you can feel the difference in the height. It's only about 3 ½ feet difference, it's still kinda creepy. And they only have this one rail to keep you from falling over. Safe. But we took some GREAT pics up there! Then we went to the baptistery out front and nothing too special about this one. Except the guards did a demonstration when we were all in there where they exhibit the acoustics of the building and this was AMAZING. Just this little lady got up in the middle and started singing some triads and different tones and it was just a really unique and exciting. (Haley, remember that song yall sang at All State with the overtones? This is kinda what it sounded like with just this one chick!)
After Pisa, everyone was leaving for their free days so they just dropped us all off at the train station in Pisa and Hillary, Nicole, and I left for the Cinque Terre along with Charlotte, Stephen, Jeff, and Thane who were going there too. The Cinque Terre is just Italian for "Five Towns" because it’s a group of 5 small towns on the Italian Riviera and they are PHENOMENAL.
I got the swordfish and it was LEGIT – yall know I'm not a fish guy, but this was greaaaaat. Afterwards, the 3 of us went to get some sunset action by the cliff, and we walked down the rocks and had a great little experience on the rocks in the ocean. It was so peaceful and exhilarating at the same time. We got a million pictures – thanks to our new found Canadian friends – and then just chilled and watched the sun set. Such a God time right there – you can just feel it. Here we were, these tiny people, on these huge rocks, next to this ginormous cliff, in Italy…so amazing. Then later we met back up with the others and tried to watch the Lakers/Celtics game, but the bars here take down the TVs after the soccer games! It's crazy. So we just called it a night because of our big (little did we know just HOW big) day ahead of us.
So we had heard about the hiking. Rick Steves, friends, professors…everyone recommends doing it. WORD. IF YOU EVER GO TO ITALY, MAKE A DAY TRIP HERE AND DO THE HIKE.
It's a 7-mile journey from our town (on the low end) to the 5th town on the other end. It started off pretty easy, lots of old people on their day trips from wherever walk this part of it. Beautiful scenery right on the coastline with a view of all the pastel builidings in the town. The whole hike is practically along the coastline which made for such a great view. I'll just post a bunch of pictures of this day because words don't do it justice. It took us about 4 hours with lunch in there and I've never had more fun on a better experience in my life! This was so crazy and great and exhausting and scary and YOU HAVE TO DO IT. At the end, we got in the water on the beach to relax a bit, and then the 4 of us guys really wanted to do some cliff jumping that we had heard was great, but we didn't have enough time to really search it out, so we found this one spot on the end of the trail and we went back to it and Jeff ended up jumping off of it. Good. Lord. It was about a 4 story drop into a SMALL clearance in the water away from the rocks, but he had climbed around there before and swam down there to see if it was deep enough, then climbed back up to us and jumped off. I really wish I did it too – but they kept talking about technical ways in which to jump and all this stuff that filled up my mind with a big NO so the rest of us didn't do it. But super cool picture of him doing it. Next time though.
Then we caught the train out and headed to Florence where we are now and we go on our bike tour tomorrow then meet up with the group on Saturday. Long day again tomorrow so we're off to bed. Stay tuned for the rest of the adventures…
Three years and I'm still breathing,
Regan.
June 15, 2008
Ok, sad news. It rained in Florence the day we were supposed to do our bike tour. Good news: they did the Wine tour instead! (that's also offered by this same company) Since we did our amazing hike the day before, we figured that was good enough exercise for the week. The tour was a blast, too! We showed up at the spot at 10 in the morning, and they drove us about 45 minutes up the Tuscan hills of Florence to this castle where the first winery was, and where we would've gotten our bikes. We took our tour with our guide, then did some wine and oil tasting…What a great way to start the morning, right? The craziest thing about this tour was that it was almost all Texas people or people with some Texas connection. One girl was from Tech and she is actually Kelsey Abbe's roommate – small world right? Her name was Helen and she's a tri-delt (She knows Ashleigh and Allie and everyone). And she was from Highland Park so we knew some of the same SMU students too. Then there were a couple of Houston guys, and another girl who went to UT. Our tour guides were AWESOME too – this one chick Mary from San Diego knew KP and some other SMU people!
Anyway, the whole day was so much fun and not a let down at all even though we didn't get to cycle. (The sun came out after lunch just to rub it in our faces. Punk.) I guess that's what we get on Friday the 13th. We went to another vineyard after lunch and sampled some more wine. And don't worry, I bought TONS of wine to bring back for everyone so don't think you're missing out at all. It was all so good too. And I learned a ton (Italy isn't a TOTAL waste, ha) about wine that I never knew before. I'll make sure to enlighten you all.
After the tour, we all passed out and napped for a while, then got ready for dinner. We started off at JJ's (thanks Hatsie!) and then worked our way over to this place Nicole heard was "neat" from some people…UNDERSTATEMENT. First getting lost, we went into this really nice hotel to ask directions and the concierge thought we were guests at the hotel so he called and made us a reservation and gave us his hotel business card so we could verify…LE-GIT. We found the place, Il Latini, and we sit down and then this crazy cool old waiter comes by and asks if we like Prociutto e Melon … a common appetizer here. We said, "Yeah," and confused, asked for a menu since there were none originally. While looking at the menu, he then brings a bottle of red wine, some water, and about 409 appetizer plates of all different stuff. (Including pâté, which I loved!) Then about 30 minutes later, the 3 of us stuffed already, he brings 3 plates of pasta. Of course we demolish them. So good. I had to unbutton the pants a bit at this point…Ryan, think of us on Thanksgiving. That's how I felt. Then after the pasta, thinking we would get dessert now, he brings a HUGE plate of meats – lamb, veal, pork, chicken, and "beef" (there was none. Thank Jesus.) Hillary literally skipped this one (weak sauce) so Nicole and I killed it. Contemplating vomiting or just rolling out of the restaurant, he then brings us a plate of desserts. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! (Typing this right now makes me sick just thinking about it). These were really good – so we finish them. Naturally. Fat kids. Then we get some biscotti and some "dunking" liquid which smelled like and resembled whiskey…so I steered clear. I seriously would've died. And to finish it all off, he brings some supmante, a dessert champagne, for us. Whew. Ok. That's it. We were exhausted, baffled, stuffed, excited, and so much more as we left. Such a great meal and an unforgettable experience that our wallets – excuse me, we – will never forget! Turns out Ben, Clay, Kylie, Arleen, Abby, and Liz had the same meal the night before and failed to warn us about it. Thanks.
The next morning we met up with our whole group at 7 to tour Florence. The Uffizi, Academia, and Duomo were all we saw, but it was still really neat. The Uffizi houses some of the most amazing and famous works of art – Michelangelo, Boticelli, Rafael, etc. We saw Michelangelo's David at the Academia and I loved this. So cool – and it's pretty big so it's crazy to think he carved it. Ended the day with a much needed quiet bus ride back to Orvieto and then studied for our cinema midterm that we had today. Now I'm off to write my THIRD paper for Art History before we leave for Capri tomorrow night – the beach! Can't wait.
I miss yall so much! Meeting and talking with Helen made me miss Lubbock a lot, so I can't wait to see yall. And after our huge dinner, I'll be skipping meals for the duration of the trip so please have backyard BBQs planned for me when I return. Alright? Sweet.
Happy Fathers Day Dad!
Talk to yall soon – call me, text me, email me, facebook me.
Regan Hands down. The best part of my trip so far. When we got there, we went to eat at this little restaurant and had some great white wine (the best in this region), amazing pesto (what this region is known for!) and some fish…finally!
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