I’m sure it can’t be good for me to see the sunrise this often.

I must say, I was a little reluctant to get up early and leave England this morning. I didn’t want to leave my family and the lovely weather and go back to a hot foreign country where the men wear gold chains and don’t speak English or eat steak and kidney pie. Why am I wasting time in Italy when I could be doing something useful with my time, like job hunting in London (kidding, Heather!)

Well, I got to Pisa and the Piazza di Miracoli and cheered up a little. The tower really does lean as advertised, quite dramatically, poor thing – it looks like it must have a nasty backache after all these years. Independent of its leaning, it’s really quite a lovely tower, too. My dad did mention that the church tower in the nearby village of Buxton also leans quite noticeably, but he allowed that Pisa’s tower was probably a little more impressive.

I guess for all anyone knows, I could just be holding the camera wonkily.








I cheered up even more when I got to La Spezia, near Cinqueterra. The village, Bassia or something, where I’m staying is right up in the hills, and very pretty. The hostel’s nice, and I’m only sharing a room with one other person, an Australian girl. We went to dinner tonight and talked about our travels, and I got a bit more enthused again. I mean, in what other situation do you randomly go to dinner with strangers and have discussions about the integration of Aborigines into mainstream modern Australian culture over pasta? We also talked about smoking (she’s trying to quit) so it counted as work time (kidding, Heather!).

There was something on the menu I didn’t recognise, so I asked the waiter about it. He gestured for me to come and see – there was a cook in the screened corner of the dining room with a stove and hot clay dishes over the fire. He took several dishes and spreak what looked like thick pancake batter in them, and stacked them on top of one another. A few minutes later, our waiter brought the results to our table – sort of a thin, crispy at the edges flatbread. See, there’s always something food-related to cheer me.

And if I get really homesick, I’ll just go to plan B and get a flight to England for the remainder of my two months.