Pizza in Pisa, Football in Florence & Rest in Rimini

(Rimini men in the old town square)

(June 25-28) With such a wonderful experience in Cinque Terre I was reluctant to leave Italy so soon. We had an option of taking a cheap flight to Croatia giving us nearly two weeks there but I was anxious to see more of Italy. What we hadn't figured on was the heat. It was stifling. The farther we got from the coast the hotter and more muggy it became. We got off the train in Pisa to literally eat lunch (pizza), snap photos of the leaning tower and leave. I will be kind and say Pisa is a dump. That seems harsh, but it is kind like I said. It is a lonely, run down town with dirty buildings and crumbling plaster. The leaning tower is both beautiful and disappointing. The atmosphere around the tower is like a carnival with people selling worthless junk. I felt like I was back in West Africa with the number of Senegalese selling cheap sunglasses and knock-off purses on little swatches of fabric. With the picture taken of the tower we collected our bags from the valet bag service and hopped back on a train.

Our next stop was Florence. We started melting as soon as we got off the train. We had been spoiled by the efficiency of the trains in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Those trains were nice and air conditioned and easy to figure out the destinations. The Italian trains are old with worn out seats and no A/C. The air that does come into the small crack in the windows is warm and makes you feel even sicker. Annoucements for the next trains are made in Italian but there's no board at the track indicating the schedules of trains arriving and departing. We manage to get on the right trains but we always end up in the wrong seats and have to move to a crowded car with sewer breath people slumped over in the small seats next to us.

We got off in Florence and walked two blocks through town, heat radiating off the concrete, and found an overpriced room to rent on the third floor. No elevator, no A/C, no fan in our room so it was an oven. We had a shower and I rinsed off twice in twenty minutes just to bring my body temperature down. The heat in Florence made us feel as though we were trapped in a sauna. As a result Florence became the first city to suffer the chopping block on our trip. Instead of admiring all the art, architecture and vast history of the city we left it to others to discover and headed for the coast.

We got on a train the following morning and headed in the direction of Ancona. It's a port town with a ferry to Croatia so it least it would get us closer to Matt's motherland. The guide had nothing good to say about Ancona so on a whim we got off in Rimini because it was called the Ibiza of Italy. I've never been to Ibiza but I think the claim that Rimini made was a huge stretch. There was seemingly endless coastline of beach so we would find salvation in that. We got an inexpensive hotel a block from the beach and we did nothing more than utterly relax.

We've discovered during our travels that even we need a vacation from our vacation from time to time. The concept may be difficult for you to grasp because you must think, why do two people traveling the world for year need a vacation? Every place we go provides a new adventure and a new challenge. At times we run around in endless pursuit of absorbing as much as we can in a place. My spongelike brain becomes full and I need places like unremarkable Rimini to purge the voices in my head and catch up on my journal and catch up on just doing absolutely nothing at all. It's a way of recharging our batteries for more exciting towns and places.

Our final stop before setting off for Croatia was in Pescara. Matt found us a cheap flight that took only an hour flying out of Pescara. It was a hard choice between the quick flight and a 9 hour ferry ride at night. It didn't take us long to find a dumpy hotel that boasted of 3 stars for the night. We have the knack for arriving in towns during the siestas time so everything is usually closed up and we haunt the streets in search of anything open. Pescara was similar to Pisa and to Florence with it's abundance of Senegalese. My Wolof skills came in handy when I needed to ask for something or to refuse bootleg copy of the Da Vinci Code. I speak none of the romantic languages yet Wolof, a language I learned in the bush of Africa, has served far more helpful than even English at times.

Our gambles on places like Rimini and Pescara did not pay off. They served a purpose as a means to an ends. We are realistic that we will not strike gold in every town and country we enter. It will just help to make those treasures that we do find shine that much brighter.