WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26
TRAIN TROUBLE
The ride went along fine for a very short while, then it moved slower, and slower, and started stopping every now and then. The air conditioning was at first intermittent until it stopped. Outside the temperature was in the mid-30s outside. It may have been hotter inside since the windows didn’t open.
About half way from Rome to Pisa, and more than two hours into a journey that was supposed to take two hours in total, the train started leaning….a lot. My Kindle slid off the small, plastic foldout table onto the floor joining newspapers and eyeglasses and water bottles from the tables of others on the high side of the train. The train stopped. We leaned a little bit more. It started again.
Inch by slow inch it moved forward, but it felt like we might tip over at any moment. Little did we know that the conductor was trying to make it to the next station so as not to leave the passengers stranded track side.
TRAIN TWO
We made it to a station, in the middle of nowhere, disembarked with our bags into the bright, hot sunshine, and were herded to another track where we boarded a local train.
“That’s a weird coincidence,” said a delirious, feverish Chloe, after we and about a hundred others seated ourselves on the second train, and pulled out of the station our leaning train stuck sideways behind us. “The leaning train on the way to Pisa!”
It took five very hot, long hours to get to Pisa. No air conditioning in the second train either. At least we weren’t going on to Torino like the woman in the seat across from us who had two more train changes, or even furhter like the man behind us who was looking at five train changes that day.
AND SO WE ARRIVED IN PISA
The reason we came to Pisa….Chloe wanted to see the Leaning Tower. That was our plan for the next day, but when we arrived at our Airbnb, we learned it also had no air conditioning. By then, the temperature had soared to 37C. We headed out again, tired and hot, in search of air conditioning, which we found in a juice bar.
After a game of Uno and cooling down, we headed to the Leaning Tower and enjoyed walking through this lovely, small city with curved streets, the oldest university in Italy and low buildings painted in the soft oranges of Siena.
A LEANING TOWER
“It isn’t as big as I thought it would be,” was Chloe’s first reaction to the tower. The funniest part of our visit was seeing all the tourists getting their photos taken, holding the tower or pushing it over, or standing on pedestals along the road like ballerinas. The tower is a truly beautiful structure of gleaming white marble and the buildings surrounding are equally spectacular.
I have sweet memories of my last visit to Pisa, when I was in graduate school. A friend and I ran and laughed through the Camposanto Monumentale di Pisa, the cloistered cemetery with frescos that are naturally lit by sun entering the long, open walkway and cooled by a constant, playful breeze .
A NOTE ABOUT HOW WE ARE DOING
I’m not surprised Chloe is feeling sick. The heat and constant motion has been too much. Honestly our days are getting lost in a blur. We are moving so quickly, seeing so many incredible sites…like tourists, not travellers. This is a marathon not a sprint but right now it feels like the latter. And we have two more very intense months of travel. No down time. We are busting with experiences and history and sensory overload.
We push through each day, knowing that each place deserves a full effort and at the end of the day, we are never sorry. But we are asking ourselves and our bodies to go the limit. We don’t linger in cafes, or lounge for hours. We are on a journey that at times feels like a working education.
The train rides are our resting time, but without air conditioning it is not so relaxing. Since we take public transit to our Airbnbs, we need to drag our bags to bus stops and from bus stops to locations. Not easy.
Pisa, Verona, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, London, Liverpool, Belfast, Cork. All in the next month.
