Another day of discovering the sites of Florence. In the afternoon we took a long walk over to the Santa Croce (pronounced cro-chay) church - stopping for some gelato along the way. We toured the church, museum and leather school. Santa Croce has hundreds of people buried inside the church including Michelangelo and Galileo (who lived under house arrest for defying the Church by stating that the earth was round). We saw a portion of St. Francis' robe and many wonderful works of art. The leather school was interesting - situated in what was once the living quarters for the Franciscan monks. It was creaed by the monks after World War II to give war orphans a trade. Tomorrow Bobbie, Terry and I are off to Venice. More Later!
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Bella Cinque Terra! Beautiful Five Villages
On Thursday we took a two and a half hour train trip to the coast along the Ligurian Sea to visit Cinque Terra. There are five charming villages "hanging" from the cliffs and going down to the sea that are connected by a trail and a train. Our first village was Riomaggiore. After wandering through the village, we began our walk on the trail to Manarola. This part of the trail is called Via Amore (Lover's Way) and led us right along the rocky coastline on a nicely paved and flat walkway. This is the easiest part of the trail and designed for folks like us! We were in the next village in about 30 minutes. What a glorious day God gave us for this excursion - it was sunny and warm - just perfect! After Manrola, we traveled by train to Vernazza skipping a stop in village number three - Corniglia. Vernazza was wonderful and we had an early dinner (4 p.m.) at a seaside cafe. Our last stop was in late afternoon at Monterosso - the last of the five villages of Cinque Terra. There were lots of "oh's and ah's" today! The train took us back to La Spezia where we boarded a 7:30 train to Florence, arriving back "home" at 10 p.m. A full and wonderful day - see the photos! Many photos are worth thousands of words for this day! More later!