July 12-19

It’s been quite a while since we last blogged, it's been difficult to find internet access.
Well, after Rome we decided to check out the leaning tower of Pisa. After reading up on Pisa, everything we heard was that Pisa was the type of town that you can see in just an afternoon. So, we got on the train in the morning and got to Pisa by noon. We took a bus out to Pisa…although we could easily have walked to the tower (we did end up walking back). We’ve learned that the tourism offices always tell you to take public transportation…although it’s quicker to walk to most places than wait for the busses to show up. Oh, and while I’m on that subject. Busses stink. There’s never a good map for them on the bus, and they never have enough information for tourists like us to know where they’re taking you. You have to basically guess as to where you want to be dropped off.
So all the guides we read and watched were correct. Pisa was definitely taken care off in an afternoon. Actually, Heidi and I were done by about 3. 3 hours in Pisa was sufficient (that included walking back from the tower and eating lunch in a sit down restaurant). We got back to the train station and were informed that Italian trains were out of service due to a RAILROAD STRIKE! We got a little nervous since there really wasn’t much else to do in Pisa. We managed to find a Texan stationed in Italy on vacation with his mom. He was also trying to get out of Pisa. They had been jumping from track to track trying to get on a train that was actually moving. Long story short, we jumped on a train to Genova, which is halfway between Pisa, Italy and Nice, France. We thought that would be a good location since Nice was halfway between Rome and Barcelona, our next big city to hit.
Sadly, we were mistaken. Genova wasn’t a good city. Actually, there was nothing in Genova. No camping, no trains out, no cheap hotels. Instead we stayed at the train station overnight until 6:15, when the next train to Nice would head out. Let me tell you, staying in a train station over night was not the highlight of the trip. Well, we got to Nice, and that wasn’t much better. Fortunately they had camping, unfortunately we had to walk about 3 miles up hill to get to it. After a long night of not sleeping in a train station walking 3 miles up hill wasn’t all that great. Also, the only way we’d make it to Barcelona was by taking a train at 6 am. That would mean we would have to get up at 4:30 to make the 3 mile journey (downhill this time) to get to the train station. For the record, we walked about 12 miles that day…on little sleep. We had to go into town once to purchase food, plus the walk back to the train station and obviously we needed to go to the beach. They had stone beaches, not nearly as much fun as Lake Michigan’s sand beaches.
After all that walking I managed to get blisters all over my feet. They started off small and I ignored them, which doesn’t do well for blisters. One managed to go between my toes and was bigger than a silver dollar. I had to hobble around for a while…and then it exploded…just kidding, but it was painful. I’d post a picture but I don’t want to gross you out any more than I already have.
Everything has been great since we made it to Barcelona. We’ve decided we wanted to relax and enjoy our vacation…and actually have a vacation. We’re camping about 150 feet from the beach (a nice sandy beach). We’ve been able to rest everything accept our newly acquired sunburns. We haven’t decided our next step, but we’ve been enjoying Barcelona so much that we probably won’t leave for a while. Sorry Tolee, that probably means that we won’t be making it to Morocco, as fun as that sounds like it would be.