Saturday morning we said goodbye to our Tuscan villa (and the horribly uncomfortable mattress) and headed towards the coast. On the way, we decided to take more country roads and swing by Volterra, which we heard was a beautiful medieval town (also apparently the town that inspired Stephanie Meyer to make her villain's the Voltari, another random Twilight fact from a girl who could care less).
It was indeed beautiful, but what I didn't know was that they "recently" discovered a Roman Theatre. By recently, I mean in the 1950's but from the tour guide said that that time period was recent for an archeological find this big (no we weren't part of the tour, but I wanted to hear more about it and there was a tour group that arrived just as we were about to start walking away, free tour!!). The theatre is still somewhat intact and the tour guide said that before they started to dig, it was a soccer field and before that it was apparently a donkey racing track. Behind the stage, there is the layout for another building that was built when the Christian church outlawed theatre (sigh). That building became a bath house and the foundation for a few of the bath tubs are still intact! I was definitely in awe of this piece of theatrical history. To think about performing on a stage like that in front of over 2,000 people is amazing. So much so that I sat here and waited for these pictures to upload!
After more wandering and shopping in Volterra, we got back in the car and headed out again. We had talked about swinging by Pisa and checking out the tower, but when we got there, traffic was so bad and we were both starving so we opted to stop at a pizzeria outside of town and try again on Tuesday. We then headed for our final destination of the day, the beach town Rapallo.
The hotel was nice, and we were given a bottle of Prosecco to enjoy on the balcony looking over the Mediterranean Sea. It was a gorgeous view, and thankfully a gorgeous day. The hotel had a spa so we decided that we would treat ourselves to a massage. It was a great massage, but very different from what spa's are like back home. There wasn't much to cover up with and I had to remind myself that nudity isn't as big of a taboo in Europe as it is in the US.
That night we had dinner at the hotel restaurant looking over the harbor, and then walked along the seaside and back. We then headed back to the hotel room and Robert went out again to take pictures of the town at night. I started reading and suddenly came down with a nasty sore throat that stayed with me through the next morning.
Sunday, we wandered around the town of Rapallo, which is very much a seaside resort, and very expensive to boot. We were told that there was a cathedral on top of a hill that you had to either hike several hours, drive an hour or take the 8 minute funicular up to the top. We decided to take the funicular and headed over to buy tickets. It was pretty exciting going up, even though I still wasn't feeling all that great, but the view from the top was gorgeous. The cathedral had just started mass, so we didn't stay long after taking pictures, and then headed back down.
And there is where I will stop for now...next up, our exciting journey to Monterosso al Mare...
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