Day Trey

On the third day, we went on an excursion to the Cinque Terre ("Five lands" or something similar) region of the northwestern coast, which is essentially the national "park" that encompasses the five villages from which the name is derived. We (that is to say, our tour) took two vans; this is a much better approach to excursions than double-decker buses. Our first stop was Riomaggiore:





From here, we walked through the "Tunnel of Love" (double entendre much?) to Manarolo. Here is a view from the walkway, which was right on the cliffs:



The walk is only about a mile or so. From Manarolo we took a ferry to Vernazza, where we spent about two hours walking around and eating lunch. First we climbed up the tower:



After that, we got some simple pizzas at a cafe and finished off with some more gelato. Once our two hours were up, we were picked up by the vans and driven to Corniglia, the last of our stops (we didn't go to the fifth Terre). On the way back, we stopped to take in a view of the terraced hillside:



It was really quite amazing that almost all the available land was terraced and worked (mostly grapes, some olive trees and probably some other crops). What was even more amazing is that we made it home alive after having been on those roads, which were barely wide enough for two vehicles on the straight parts, let alone the curves. At almost every bend, there was a mirror so that you could see if there was a car coming the other way, waiting to shove you off the cliff. Our tour guide also honked before each turn as an additional precaution. When we finally did make it back around 5 or 6pm, we were quite exhausted, so we took a nap, which turned into going to sleep for the night (well, I stayed up longer and watched snooker on tv; very engrossing).

Next: Day 4!

Day 2

We woke up after about twelve hours of sleep and didn't have anything planned, so we consulted our guidebook for some tourist-y things to do. We ended up deciding not to go to the Uffizi or the Academia since we a) hadn't bought tickets in advance and didn't want to stand in line for two hours and b) didn't want to deal with the crowds inside either (maybe it wasn't crowded inside). So we got in line to climb Il Duomo; it took twenty minutes or a half hour to get inside, but it was worth it. Basically, you are climbing a staircase inside the wall of the church and eventually the dome on top (see previous post), so it is understandably narrow. For part of the way, the people climbing up and the people climbing down use the same staircase, so you get pretty intimate with some complete strangers. Once at the top, of course, you climb out into the open air and see Florence from above, and it is very cool.


The periodic windows inside the wall of the dome also afforded some interestingly framed views of the city.

After The Duomo, we walked around a bit and headed for the Bargello Museum. This is a museum of sculpture, and there are a number of Michelangelo and Donatello pieces, among others (you may be expecting it, but I refuse to do a TMNT joke; even I have limits). I am not a museum-philic, but it was interesting enough, I suppose. Here is one sculpture (it sure did take a long time for me to pose while it was being sculpted):


After the museum, we sought out some lunch. After what seemed like hours of searching for a Domino's, we gave up and just got some pizza at a local cafe. It was simple and good, as expected. We went back to the hotel and took a short rest, after which we headed out again to the Santa Croce (church). This is the church that is in the lower of the two pictures from atop Il Duomo above, and here:

You are allowed to take pictures inside, but not with flashes, so it was hard to get good pictures. Apparently some tombs of famous people are inside, such as Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Enrico Fermi. It was also a little creepy how there were slabs of marbe in the floor with inscriptions, ostensibly meaning that there were ACTUAL DEAD PEOPLE beneath them. And we were literally walking on their graves.

Anyway, that was basically it for day 2, except for the dinner at our hotel, during which the people (Americans) next to us bitched about their food such that they weren't charged for their entrees (even though the woman cleaned her plate - how bad could it have been?) and then conspired to write every travel guide they knew and "warn" other people about the restaurant at this hotel. Total douchebags. I kept hoping that the guy would choke on his $40 bottle of wine, but it didn't happen.

Next: day 3!

In Italia

I've been procrastinating for a while, but here it is: a synopsis of our recent trip to Florence. You may have already noticed this here.

We got in on a Sunday around noon having traveled over night, but not wanting to go to sleep and exacerbate the jet-lag. So after we checked into the hotel, we walked around a bit and came across Il Duomo:

We walked around the Duomo and got some Gelati. Supposedly this is what Italy is known for, and it was good, but I'm not sure I'd move there just so I could eat it instead of Ben & Jerry's.

After this we headed over the Arno and towards Giardino di Boboli (in English, "The Garden of Pizzas"). This is a very large residence which has a museum indoors (we didn't see it) and maybe ten million acres of landscaped grounds, including pools and a never-ending path of cypress trees.



After walking around for a couple of hours, our feets got tired and so we left. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a small place and ate pasta outside. Actually I didn't like the sauce - it was too oily and not very tomato-y. Finally we made it back to the hotel and practically passed out. It was only about 8pm, but this was much later than we thought we would make it. The hotel room was quite miniature, as apparently most European hotel rooms are, but seriously, we could barely fit both suitcases on the floor to open them.

Next post: Day 2!

RC coda

I once related to Lanyard my wish for Roger Clemens upon his assimilation into the Yankees' organization. It was roughly this: I wished that during one of his starts, he would pitch so badly that he would become physically ill all over the pitcher's mound. Having thus evacuated his stomach in such a public fashion, he would then become so morbidly embarrassed that it would cause temporary dementia, such that his next decision would be to get down on all fours and reingest his vomit.

Now that Clemens has come out of retirement again and returned to the Yankees again, my desires are no different, except to say that I hope he had a giant bowl of spaghetti for dinner (I will entertain other possibilities, but in my experience, spaghetti vomit is the grossest of all, especially if stomach-residency is relatively brief).

I really can't think of a better way to at once declare 1) that you have little respect for your fellow players 2) that you have little respect for the fans of baseball - the ones that pay your salary and 3) that you are a pompous douchebag than by coming out of retirement in the middle of the season not once, but twice. And for what is possibly the most amount of money that a baseball player has ever been paid for a single season (yes, he doesn't actually get $28 million because he's only playing a partial season...). To anyone that says it's "not about the money," I say, "phbbbt."

I for one (and I'm sure I'm not alone) was relieved to hear that he was not going to return to the Red Sox. I truly believe that their offer of $18 million was nothing more than a gentleman's offer, one the Red Sox knew would never be accepted. For one thing it was significantly less than he made last year with the Astros - in his home state. But this way nobody can say that they didn't offer (whether if the Sox actually needed pitching they would have made a higher offer is anybody's guess).

To be fair, I will wholeheartedly disagree with the many people I have heard (or read) say that Clemens is "washed-up" or "on the way down." How he does this year remains to be seen, but there is no evidence that such a decline has actually begun. Last year his ERA was 2.30, which, if he had had enough innings to qualify, would have led the NL by about 0.60. In 2005 he did lead the NL in ERA by almost that much. No, his W-L record was not great, but through no fault of his own. All you can ask out of a (starting) pitcher is his ERA and innings pitched. So it's very easy to argue that even in the last two years he was the best pitcher in the league.

But in some way that just makes his behavior even more irritating. If he's still so good, why did he retire in the first place? Answer: to spend more time with his family. That is entirely acceptable and even applaudable, but in that case just retire and stay retired. Is he so shielded from the outside world that he can't see that all this flip-flopping is viewed as disingenuous, greedy, and self-centered? There are many who would argue, "well, if he can negotiate such a contract, then why shouldn't he?" I guess my answer is "just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should." After all this ranting, though, I'm afraid this is probably just another page in the book titled "Athletes Really Do Care about Integrity More than Money, and other Fantasies." (Simon & Schuster, 2001).