Day 16 - Paestum

Today was a nice relaxing day for me because we woke up and had some time in San Gimignano and then were going to spend most of the day traveling to our next city. We woke up for a great breakfast at La Cisterna Hotel followed by a visit to a couple of places around town before we had some free time to go shopping, exploring, or whatever.

First we went to a museum there, where they had a little bit of art and some more medieval type artifacts. It was pretty cool to see something different than just art that was fairly similar to the other styles that we had seen throughout the trip. Then we got to go up to the top of the tallest tower in this town that has several prominent towers in its skyline. It seemed a like a longer trip up the stairs than how tall I had assessed it to be from the ground. 

When we finally made it to the top, there was a very large bell up at the top. The views that you could see from this high point of the valleys and rolling hills with vineyards below were absolutely beautiful and fascinating. Seeing these views from the bus the day before was awesome, but this was so much better. Nature is just so calming and breathtaking. On this trip, I have seen some of the world’s most famous architecture, art, and creative expressions, but I don’t think anything can replace the original creation of nature and the wonders of it. I could go around looking at architecture all day, but I am glad that I have my whole lifetime to observe the vastly different landscapes of the earth because it never ceases to amaze me. After we had sufficient time up there to take photos and just observe the surround areas, we headed back down to go to our next thing.

The next place that we had the option of going to was the torture museum that they have in town. This was an interesting experience to say the least. It is just really sad to see all the different ways that the corruption of the human mind can come up with to inflict pain onto other people. It was an educational experience for sure, though, because I had seen some of these devices before, but not most of them. The ones that just seemed the worst to me were the ones that involved cutting a person in half in some form. There were various devices to contain the victim and many different tools or saws that were used in this way. I think the phrase, “Those who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat it.” is an appropriate thought on why people should go see things like this. Now looking back on it, I think many people can see why it was so wrong, and I wonder and hope that people down the road will find some things in our society that are cruel and will think the same thing about. Anyways, after having seen quite enough of ways to inflict pain on people, I left and waited for some other people so we could head out and just look around at the shops in town.

We went around and just looked at the many different shops that this small town has to offer. There were a lot of shops with knives and swords in them, and those were interesting to look at. Probably the coolest thing that I saw in any of the shops was an incredibly intricate chess set. It was really cool with the pieces all being forged out of different metals. I’m sure it was quite expensive because similar figures with the chess pieces were about 20 Euros a piece. The set didn’t even have price listed on it, but had something written on a card on it, so either it wasn’t for sale, or you would need to talk to them to establish a price for it. After spending a while looking around at all the shops, we went to go get some gelato, having to decide between two shops right next to each other: one claiming, “The World’s Best Ice Cream” and the other “World Champion Gelato.” How could we go wrong with either of them? After hearing that some of the other people had tried them last night, we went to the “World Champion” one and I got some that was mint flavored, and it was the most realistic mint flavored Ice cream or gelato I have ever had. It was not artificially flavored with mint, but had little bits of mint leaves in it and it was extremely good; I might actually buy that they won some World Championship in gelato. Then I just waited around at the fountain in the middle of the square where we were to meet. Then we all headed back down to where our tour bus was going to pick us up.

We started our longest traveling time together on this trip: about a eight hour ride from San Gimignano to Paestum where we would be staying the next two nights. For me, I do not mind long rides like this, especially with as much room as we had. We don’t have a ton of room on the bus, but it is more than I had on most of our family vacation roadtrips. For our family vacations, almost every year we went on one we drove there with three kids all in the back of a car, so I am used to this type of a trip and I enjoy it for the most part. It was a relaxing time for me because even though I am in a bus with about 22 other people, I could just shut out the rest of the world with putting in my headphones and listening to music or my audiobook. After spending a couple of weeks surrounded by people, I just need a little time to myself every now and then, so I accepted it with open arms. About halfway into the trip, we stopped at a rest stop since there are some laws about how long our driver can drive consecutively, so we had to have a rest stop for 45ish minutes. After visiting the store to get some snacks and the restroom, our bus driver Jonfranco bought us a soccer ball and we had a good game of keep away going for quite a while with the whole group which was pretty fun. Then we hit the road again and after quite a while we made it to the farmhouse/hotel that we were staying at. At this place, they make most of their own food, and they are famous for their mozzarella made from their water buffalo’s milk. We arrived and after we were assigned our rooms, we had the privilege to have one of our two group meals there. We got to taste some of the mozzarella, and it was as good as advertised along with some homemade pizza topped with it. After a tasty meal, I headed back to my room to get some journaling done and head to bed since it was already pretty late by the time we had arrived and eaten supper.