Side trips

On a couple of free days, we did go on day trips to both Pisa and Pompeii.
The journey to Pisa was an ass numbing 6 hours in our tiny car.


It's probably one of those things you have to see before you die, but to be honest a lot of these "must see sights", seem to be hyped up above and beyond the reality. When we got there, we parked and you could see it in the distance so just had to walk over, but it is not as spectacular as you would imagine. Yes, it's a tower, yes it's leaning. That's about it. That's as interesting as it gets really. Its just swarmed all over by tourists all day every day so it just goes to show the power of hype!





After we left Tuscany, we had planned to go to Naples, being the home of pizza and all, I couldn't wait. We even planned ahead and had a room booked for two nights. It was another five hour drive to the city which the Italians themselves call the sewer of Italy. Now Ilaria I know what you mean by "the south". It was like a different country as you drive from north to south. In the north, its clean and the people are stylish. In Naples, rubbish lines the streets, the driving is just absolutely mental, comparable to Morocco and sorry but a lot of the women looked like hookers! We high tailed it out of there and headed for Pompeii which was about half an hour away.

It was getting dark driving around the streets of Pompeii and we had nowhere to stay, so we had the bright idea of heading to a 24 hour car park and bedding down for the night. It saved us money, but we definitely paid for it with our souls :)
It was so hot that the windows has to be left open or we would have smothered, instead we were eaten alive by mosquitoes. Definitely the worst nights sleep I think I've ever had.

In the morning, certainly not refreshed, we headed over to the Pompeii archaeological site, where while we waited for it to open we were pounced open by feral dogs roaming the streets. Fun!

Finally, emerging into the sun-baked streets of ancient Pompeii, we had a wander around. It was really amazing to see houses 2000 years old preserved so well, by the volcano Mount Vesuvius that erupted, covering everything. There were houses of rich and poor, an amphitheatre, taverns, a mausoleum and much more The only thing was that there were plaster of paris casts made of the remains left by bodies. These were in a different museum, that was just too hot to walk to. Below are pics (not mine) of the casts we didn't get to see. Also orange and lime trees growing in the grounds

Life and death

Our last day in Anghiari wasn't all that nice. We got up at 5:30 as usual to feed the goats but Brent had told us the evening before that two of the male goats were going to be killed for meat. So after they had been fed, he went into the pen and carried out two of the kids to be brought out to a little shed behind the main barn "to let them calm down". I wasn't too happy about this, they were frightened and kept calling for their mothers.

Then about twenty mins later, one of the helpers working there went out to do his job, the goats started screaming and I had to go into the milking parlour which is quite noisy, to try to drown out the sounds, but you could still hear the screams. It was absolutely awful. We had been looking after these goats for a week, which mightn't seem like a long time, but you can get attached.

Later in the day, Brent came out on his porch with the skinned carcass and began hacking into it, there was blood on the white butchers jacket hanging over the chair, all over the porch and its pungent odour in the air. Not to mention the flies swarming around in the heat, it didn't make a nice combination. It really reinforced for me why I'm a veggie.

There was also the incident a couple of days before hand where we went in, to feed the chickens and I noticed a lot of feathers spread around the ground, I looked down the slope, where lying at the bottom there were three chickens dead and rigamortis had definitely set in. Looking across the pen there was another lying dead. We went to tell Brent, thinking maybe he had killed them, but it didn't make any sense why he would have left them there. He said that more than likely, a weasel had slid through the fence and killed one, then tried to drag it through the fence, but obviously they are too big to fit through so went after another and another before giving up.

We were given the delightful task of collecting the chickens in a bag to be thrown out. Just as we were about to, the heavens opened up and lightening was streaking across the sky, so I sheltered in the hen house with the chickens, while Patrick decided to scramble down the slope and collect them in the lashing rain. He brought them up to the hen house and plopped them down where you could make out a chicken foot sticking out of the top of the bag!

On the last day though, when we were feeding them, there were some mother hens keeping a batch of eggs warm, but you could hear the cheeping of a little chick that had hatched and it was flopping around. It even managed to get up on the mothers back at one stage.