Free Travel #1

Everyone arrived back to Citerna safely from the hotel by Sunday night. There were students who stayed in Italy, some who went to Spain, some to France, some to Germany, some to Switzerland, and some to Austria. A few even went to Liechtenstein. There were some inevitable snags in the travel plans of some groups. One group of six had to take a long detour in order to get back here from Munich because all the trains to Italy from there were booked solid because of Oktoberfest. Another group got locked out of their hostel because they arrived in town too late. These sorts of things are certainly annoying, but part of the maturing experience offered by this kind of program is the opportunity to learn how to deal with unexpected situations. No one got hurt or lost, and so we all considered the weekend a great success!

My family spent almost the entire travel period in Tuscany, specifically the area around Lucca, a walled city in northern Tuscany that dates to the Roman period. We spent three nights in Lucca and used it as a base to explore the area. Wednesday, on our way there, we stopped in Collodi to visit the Parco di Pinocchio, a small theme park dedicated the wooden boy whose creator hailed from that town. Collodi is also home to the Villa Garzoni Gardens (pictured), which are quite impressive and include a butterfly house, which the kids enjoyed.

On arrival in Lucca, we had to park outside the city walls despite our hotel's being inside; only residents are allowed to park within the city. Lucca's walls are its most distinctive feature; they were built in the 16^th and 17^th centuries and are completely intact. They were converted into a public park in the early 19^th century and now attract joggers, bikers, and others who simply want to enjoy the view. We spent all day Thursday in Lucca, walked on the walls, visited a couple of villas that are now museums, and climbed the city's highest tower, which actually has trees growing on top of it. We even found a playground that the kids were able to play on for a while.

Friday morning we drove to Pisa and spent a couple of hours in the Piazza of Miracles. This was the only experience during the travel period that was not new to me. The Leaning Tower now costs 15 euros and a couple of hours' wait to enter. Furthermore, they do not allow children under the age of eight inside, so we passed on that. We paid to go into the cathedral and spent the rest of the time relaxing in the piazza. Then we returned to Lucca, checked into our new hotel outside the walls—we were unable to get reservations for all three nights in the same place—and walked back into town to rent bicycles. We found a rental shop and hired two tandem bikes that allowed us to tow the kids behind us, and then we took the bikes up on the walls for a ride around the city. It was quite fun, and Edward and William really enjoyed it (Richard fussed a lot.) Afterwards we returned to the hotel and relaxed the rest of the evening. The only wrinkle was that I got a call from Ed Hicks back at Faulkner informing me that the administration wanted us to produce a video of the Study Abroad students for Faulkner's Benefit Dinner on October 2. I had no idea how to do this, but said we'd figure something out.

On Saturday, we left our hotel and headed west to Torre del Lago Puccini near the coast. Lucca was Giacomo Puccini's birthplace, and the town boasts several sites associated with him, including a café where we got charged nearly five euros for a couple of coffees. However, Torre del Lago Puccini is where Puccini lived for most of his adult life and where he composed several of his most famous operas. His home there is still owned by the Puccini family and operated as a museum. The place is not big, but it is nearly perfectly preserved; his son left everything there the way it was when his father died and made it into a museum the following year (1925). After leaving there, we took a driving tour into the Apuan Alps and saw some fantastic scenery, including some apparently abandoned marble quarries. We made it back to Citerna around 7:30 p.m., tired but happy.

On Sunday, we breakfasted at the hotel before setting off for Perugia, about an hour south of Citerna by car. The historic center of Perugia is actually very nice. A series of escalators takes you from the public parking areas up into the remains of the 16^th-century papal fortress and from there out into the streets. We did a walking tour of the town's most historic streets, sat in on part of a Mass in the cathedral, ate lunch in the town square for about half of what it would have cost us in Florence, and got free admission to the city's major art museum. To top it off, we found a nice painting on canvas in an open-air market that we decided to buy for our wall at home. All in all, I'd have to say it was a very successful trip. We got back to Citerna in the mid-afternoon, and I tried to catch up on some schoolwork. At 7:00 p.m. we held a worship service for everyone who had returned to the campus by that point; we had about a dozen people there to participate. The rest of the groups trickled in over the next four hours.

Monday and Tuesday (yesterday and today) were class days and a time of recuperation from the free travel. It was also a time for Kevin Cline and me to try to put this Benefit Dinner video together. We have come up with something that I hope will meet with everyone's approval; we hope to email it to Dr. Hicks tonight. We are also recharging our batteries for our trip to Greece, for which we depart at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. I don't know what the availability of internet connections will be in our hotels, so I may not be able to post another update until October 10. Please pray for our continued safety on these travels.