Ok, I've been a bit lame on the keep people updated front. I'm trying to balance myself for a little on that dang ball again, hopefully I can stay on it long enough to get something out. Well, I've been busy... yes I have been busy.
When last I wrote, I was still surrounded by the splendour that is Venice. I have moved around my fair share since then.
So, our transport of choice from Venice all the way through to Rome is Busabout. Set routes exist throughout Europe, and the bus comes through it's set stops on alternate days, and you are free to jump on and off whenever you please, and stay in each place for as long as your heart desires.
So, we trudged onto the bus in Venice at eight in the morning, ready for our day of travel.
The drive was breathtaking, as we wound along roads suspended as though they were floating amongst the dips and folds of the Tuscan hills. Everything would flash dark as we'd drive through the heart of a hill, held for a breath in the belly of these mounds of earth, like a baby growing in its mother.
When we arrived in Rome I was holding it together better than I have been known to on travel days. We stayed at another campsite, as we had in Venice, the recommended Busabout accomodation, where they drop you off and pick you up. Well, these places make me just a little bit sad. They are made up largely of Australians, who have travelled overseas seemingly with the sole intention of grouping with other Australians within the confines of the camping ground and getting very, very drunk, very, very often. They have made it over here, to these utterly incredible places, with so much wonder and beauty and magic, and they're missing it! All they see is the inside of the hostel and the bottom of their beer glass... and I can't help but think... what is the point?
The next day was our Rome Orientation Day. We wondered, ready to see what we would stumble across... We saw the Trevi Fountain, which was majestic and captivating. The tourists swarmed like ants with cameras, but it didn't feel as hollow and empty as other scenes have throughout my travels, I could feel a soul there. Maybe it is the rich history, the stories... Brooke said it was because these people were truly and honestly HAPPY to be there, and I saw a lot of truth in that.
We saw the Pantheon, and church upon church upon church. The sheer size of these buildings astonished me the most. I stepped inside and instantly felt myself shrink to the size of a freckle. And the space in there, in these places, it was like it was somehow larger than the open air outside it, like the Tardis of the ancient world.
And I really did feel soemthing in these spaces. My breaths felt deeper, like I needed to suck soemthing into the heart of me. So old, so massive, so textured amd intigruiging and simply incredible to walk on stones layed by human beings with lives and thoughts and ideas who lived so very very long ago- to run my fingers along walls they built up with their hands in another time, another world. It was kind of mind blowing.
The next day we were joined in our adventures by Maik, a German student who was sharing our cabin. It is very different, travelling with someone you don't know. Brooke and I were so used to the way we operate throughout the day, the way we manuveur things and make decisions, and it was really interesting to have someone else just thrown right in there, into the works. It makes you notice things you wouldn't have otherwise, brings certain things into the light when they used to sit in the shadows...
Woke up the next day, and off the the Coloseum we were. By this point in our trip, the jokes had started, as it really settled in how incredible this is, this thing we're doing. "Oh yeah, just off to the Coloseum today, whatever dude, totally normal...". This really is our lives. Holy Hell.
And boy was the Coloseum incredible. I could feel my stomach in my throat when we stepped into that epic piece of history. We walked around Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum, chatting about the silliest things in the most incredible locations. We saw Trajan's Column, the Arch of Titus, the Arch of Septimius Severus. The world that had been a part of suffocating me last year as I studied and studied and studied it... it had come to life around me, like pictures stepping out of a story book. It's much more beautiful this way. I prefer it alive rather than dead and cold.
As usual, I ballsed thinsg up a little the next day, and I thought it was my last in Rome before I went ahead to Tuscany for my little lone adventure. We saw the Spanish Steps, cruised around Duomo Aureaus. We saw Circo Massimo, and as Brooke took the Metro 'home', wound through some back streets, up hills and round sharp little corners, past Italian men chatting excitedly about something near their feet. Vines wept and dripped and spilled off buildings and cascaded like green hair from lamp posts above quaint little restaurants. I was pretty spectacular!
After I readied all my crap for my 'departure' on the bus in the morning, we ate dinner. Brooke handed me her leftover pizza and as I munched away at it, I glanced down at the date on the wrapper, and low and behold, I was a day ahead of myself. I just picture myself that next morning, up at the crack of dawn, waiting for a bus that never came... pizza saved me.
So I spent my read last day in Rome walking. Boy did I walk that day. I just walked, and watched where my feet would take me.
So, now we had my first travel day on my own. How would I hold up? Hmmm... I was getting the Busabout to Florence, and from there I would travel out of the city about an hour to Chianti, where I was staying four nights.
The bus had a bonus stopover in a little town called Orvieto, perched in the face of a cliff. The bus stopped, and we ventured into the pouring rain, took a little trolley train to the halway point of the mountain, and then a bus to the top. I got an ace to tuck up my sleeve when a woman from the bus couldn't enter the majestic cathedral because her skirt was too short, and her shirt to low, and she asked me to take photos with her. I used the magic card when I gave the camera back and latched onto the group. We had coffee, the best I have had in a LONG time in this charming little coffee shop, up there, nestled in the face of the cliff. I met Naoko from Sydney, whom I really really liked. She came from Japan, so we chatted endlessly about my trip there, as she piled on the advice like... peanut butter on warm toast. We wondered a little in this stunning village, disovered a market, and ran back down the mountain to make the bus on time.
When we arrived in Florence, it was 15.00, and I wasn't going to be picked up until 20.00 at the train station on 40 minutes out of Florence... sigh. But Naoko took me to her hotel, where the lovely Italian man who ran it let me leave my luggage, and she and I wondered the city for a few hours. Then I had to say goodbye, and I was off and running. Well, kind of. I was still awfully early when I arrived in Pistoia, and had to wait an hour and a half out the front of the train station for the shuttle to come and take me to the hostel. But it came, and it took me!
And there I was in Chianti, and I swear, it was Heaven on earth. The place I stayed was a villa perched on the peak of a hill flooded with olive groves and vineyards. My first morning I looked out at the view, and tears pricked my eyes, I was so incredibly happy. The silence felt like a cool shower washing over me. I just could no believe the place I was in. I still cannot. It was like a dream.
It was so perfect... so wonderful.
The ashy grey olive trees, the gentle rolling hills... the actual sound of birds! I stood there with this world rolling out around me, my heart beating faster just out of pure joy, and I could hear a man whistling off in the distance, somewhere further down the mountain. My heart could have burst.
I rode the bike down the twisting, winding road looking out over the side of this epic Tuscan hill as I delved further into its heart. Gosh it was so beautiful. I explored Vinci, where Leonardo was born, a stunning little village which broke my heart it was so pretty. Fig trees dotted the roadside, and I ate the beautiful fruit which were so sweet they actually dripped their liquid sugar. I wandered through the vinyards and olive groves and found myself at the top of a hill which overlooked the countryside and revealed all its glory. That night I sat with my dorm mates in the candlelit dining room of the hostel, the villa which has been in the family of the owners for over 700 years, and I ate ameal prepared in the kitchen, by the wife of the owner- a genuine Italian meal, prepared by an Italian matriarch in her very own kitchen. How perfect is too perfect I ask?
The next day I walked down the other side of the hill and back up again in the scorching heat and despite the intense difficulty of the 20km walk, half of it pretty much vertical, there was not one trace of negativity in me, not a sinewy strand, not a grizzly speck. I was SO happy.
When I went to cook my dinner that night, I discovered I had nothing to light the stove with, and as reception was closed until late evening, I decided to walk 3 kms into down the road to the tiny little town there to buy myself some fire! The thunder started warning me just as I stepped out the gate and I realised I didn't care in the slightest. A dog howled at the grumbling sky. Just as I was wondering when the rain would hit me, and realising how very much I didn't mind, the water started to speckle my shirt, and I felt inexplicably joyous. The road smelled deliciously rich, that wonderful odour it gets after singeing all day, when the liquid finally hits. It was so beautiful!
I bought my new lighter, and when I stepped out of the Tabacchi, I was sruck like a hammer to the face by this place I was in, and its beauty. I saw out over the valley as the rain fell and the houses and trees and roads steamed. The sun glowed behind the clouds like a muslin cloth had been draped over it. On the horizon, little pools of water, maybe lakes or lagoons were illuminated by stray beams of sunlight and it looked as though someone was melting gold in the sky, and some had dripped down to earth. I walked back in the rain, lighter now, and still making me incradibly happy.
I spent my last day in Chianti with Sarah, my newest dorm mate. We walked 25 km together, chatting, eating figs and grapes and hoarding chestnuts like squirrils (we couldn't eat the chestnuts... they were no good unfortunately). I had such a lovely time with her, cruising the Tuscan hills with this woman I had just met! I felt so wonderful in that hostel, so comfortable, so at home. It really was Heaven for me!
And then I came to Florence, met up with Brooke here, and we've been exploring these last 2 days.
But that is another story, for another day!
So, Ciao!!!
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