Gibraltar was a lot of fun! We took a mini bus up these crazy, twisty, skinny roads up The Rock. We stopped at St. Michael’s Cave, one of the 142 natural caves on The Rock and then played with the apes. The Barbary Apes are the only apes indigenous to Europe, and all 280 of them live on The Rock. They are extremely playful and have been known to steal purses, earrings, cameras…or even jump on your head.
Corsica is gorgeous!! We started off driving along the coast to a town called Carghese. We walked through the town, into two Catholic churches, seeing the difference in Roman and Greek influences, before heading into the mountains. Calanches are the red granite cliffs you see in the latter photos. In the mountains of Corsica the roads are very narrow and there are animals everywhere. We encountered pigs, goats and cow all munching along the road. My favorite part of the day was seeing the rainbow over the valley below.
Tomorrow is our first day at sea, and let me tell you, we need it!!
There’s way too much to post about Rome, and at $.43 a minute, it’s going to have to wait til we get home. It will also give me a chance to process everything we saw. Here are SOME of the pictures we took that day.
Like Rome, there is so much to process before I can begin to tell you about our few hours at the Vatican. I’ve never seen so much beauty in my life. I’ve chosen a portion of our pictures to show you.
I enjoyed Pisa more than Florence, though it wasn’t what I expected. I knew the Leaning Tower was in the Field of Miracles, but for some reason I thought it would just be there, all alone. It wasn’t! With the Leaning Tower was the Baptistry and Cathedral of Pisa. A lot of the cathedrals throughout Italy have equally ornate baptistries in front of them because the law used to state that if you were not baptized you couldn’t enter the church. They would baptize people in the baptistry and then let them into the church. Of course, while at the Tower we had to take the obligatory (John made me) silly shot holding up the Tower. John put his own spin on it by punching it out. Ha! We went into the Cathedral of Pisa and were left speechless by the beauty. The chandelier that Gallileo used to create his Law of Pendulum is hanging in the church. We also saw the enormous pulpit made from one block of marble. The mummified remains of the patron saint of Pisa are also in the cathedral. Though we got pretty wet, we thoroughly enjoyed Pisa and next time we’re here we’d like to go up to the top of the tower!
