One of the highlights of the tour, for me, was seeing the mountains made of marble. The marble quarries have been cutting away the mountains for hundreds of years and yet they still look very majestic to me. Along the hi-way on our way to Cinque Terre, we could see piles and piles of stacked up huge pieces of marble, ready for market. With all this good quality marble nearby, it is no wonder that the great artist of this area have been using this medium for ages. In fact, even the big dining room table top in our rental apartment is made of solid marble.
Cinque Terre is a series of five pretty fishing villages. To get there, we left Tuscany and entered the Luguria region. I had no idea that this portion of the Italian Riviera was so rugged. Until three years ago, you could walk between the towns along a trail on the steep hills along the coast. Unfortunately a few years ago, big storms and landslides have forced those trails closed and so we had to take a train between each town. In the summer, there are boats one can take to hop from town to town. I really enjoyed the last town, Monterosso, where there was a big sunny beach and we all made a point of wading into the Mediterranean, just to say that our toes were there.
On the way back, we stopped at Pisa to quickly lay our eyes on the tower, church and baptistery. Photos really don't show how much the tower really is leaning. In fact, I think they should change the name to the Falling Tower of Pisa. Years ago, Pisa had a busy port used for transporting marble and other things. Things were brought to Pisa and then transported inland to Florence and beyond via the Arno River. Over the years, the River has distributed so much soil into Pisa that there is no longer a port. This relatively new, unstable land is why the tower is leaning. You can tell that other structures in the same complex are also leaning and moving over time.
Our tour guide is a well educated man with a real passion for Italian history. I enjoyed the way he discussed with honesty the issues that plague Italian politics and the economy. This man is a trained accountant and worked as an auditor. He verified with disgust what I had read concerning the Italian problem of an overly weighed down, paper laden bureaucratic nightmare. Unemployment among young people is 40 %. Artisans which used to make up a big part of this economy have been scared off by mountains of paperwork. I haven't confirmed this, but it seems there are no laws concerning politicians and conflicts of interest. As one person told me, " old men make the rules and run the companies leaving no room for young people and so we need to move elsewhere". Thanks to these old men, I need to find an ATM. I'm out of cash!
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