Italy 8 - Cinque Terra - Monterosso & Vernazza

We started the day in our airBNB in Levanto - Not technically part of Cinque Terra, but unofficially the 6th of the 5 lands. We walked up to the train station, bought our hiking/training/bathroom pass, and took a quick ride to Monterosso Al Mare, the northern (northwestern) most of the cinque Cinque's. We got off the train, checked out the coast, and then hiked up the coast, around the point (with a handful of steps, some amazing views, and a detour to a German ww2 bunker that smelled like pee), and into the old town. It's a very cute town. We saw the statue of Guiseppe Garibaldi (who united Italy), the municipal building, and all the local shops. After that we headed to the cathedral (small and cute), and the adjacent Black Confraternio Oratio Mortis (Black Fraternity of the Prayers for the Dead) - a chapel and clubhouse for the 300 year old private society, membership passed down patrilineally, for community service, taking care of widows and shipwrecked sailors, and general pirate cosplay (the entire clubhouse was covered in skull-and-crossbone regalia).  And I, having stared into the sun the whole hike around the point, bought some cheap sunglasses off the shop across the street.

Then, perhaps against our better judgement, we set off for the local monastery on the top of the hill. This was up a lot of steps.  The monastery was pretty basic, and despite having the work of some master (Van Dyke? Vermier? [editors note: it was [I still don't care]]), was essentially like every other church we've seen. So then we did some *more* steps, up to the cemetery above the monastery - which was full of mausoleums ranging from antique and bordering on ruins to immaculate and rivaling the monastery. And then we decided to walk up some more stairs to the ruins of the castle above the cemetery, which had been converted - in it's semi-ruined state, to a mausoleum and burial ground. All the graves were relatively fresh, so my hunch is they were disinterred after 20-30 years and the bones moved to the ossuaries below. And in the corner of the castle, the last mausoleum chamber was unlocked, filled with building supplies, and had the best view in the entire town - looking across the harbor and the town square, and onto the other 4 terra's across the Lagunic sea.

So we hiked back down all those steps (technically, some of those steps and some other steps on a side path), and back into town. Ethan lead us through the streets to focacciaria and it was amazing. Cheap, salty, and delicious. Reinvigorated by this, we continued on our plan to hike the coastal trail to the Terra. This was described to us as "1h 45m, 2.7miles, harder than you expect, with lots of steps and amazing views", but we knew that Vernazza (Terra #2) was one of the cutest of the towns. Plus, "lots of vertical elevation and irregular hiking trails" is one of those phrases that really gets us going. Or at least me.  I think my dad said "If we're only going to hike one, we should hike the best one" I believe "in case it's such a stupid idea we don't do it again" was left implied, but we could read between the lines. Possibly not my mom, but the rest of us understood the lay of the land, especially with his knee due for replacement any year now. 

Passing tourist: "Cinque Terra? No. Es Cinque Peitras"

So we headed up past the closed hotel, into the hills, and up some stairs. The beginning of the hike was very cute - lots of great views of Monterosso and only brief uphill spurts. However, once we passed the hotel and rounded the corner, it was all stairs. Something like 300ft of elevation in a quarter mile. We slowed down, took breaks, and about 90% of the way up my Mom almost gave up. We started doing a dozen steps at a spurt, and at one point I left my bag and went ahead to scout out and make sure the rest of the hike (we were 30m into 1:45 hike) wasn't like this.  But it turns out the 30 visible steps were the last of the climb (baring 2 a hundred yards later), and as I got back to share the good news Mom was topping out!

The next hour was far better. Essentially flat, along a trail that ranged from narrow and wide, rock and dirt and occasionally wood, through vineyards and forests, and with amazing views and a cool sea breeze. At one point, we passed a man who set up all day on top of the mountain to play the accordion for spare change. Also very cool were the monorail tracks that ran through the vineyards, used to haul grapes from the harvests up the steep hillsides - rack gears on the bottom and presumably a pinion in the tractor.  At one point we passed a cat sanctuary, but in the heat of the day they were all absent, presumably off sleeping in the underbrush or chasing the ubiquitous small lizards. At one point a lizard launched itself fully over the trail, clearing the entire distance, as another lizard emerged from the underbrush chasing it.

Finally, Vernazza came into view. My first thought was "omg, I built this puzzle". Vernazza is a beautiful tiny town, with multicolored pastel houses, a protected harbor, and a medieval fort overlooking the harbor. Because it is so very picturesque, it makes it's way into a lot of artwork (such as the puzzle I'd built), and is where the movie Luca is based (says my brother, who was very excited about the fact).  And as stereotypical as it sounds to see the quaint tourist-trap town, it was beautiful and the view was gorgeous, and that's not just the endorphins talking. We still had the down-climb, which was similarly brutal, but not cardiovascularly, just on the joints. Thank God I brought my boots with me because my ankle was not happy with the downclimb, and I dawdled to baby it and also hang back with my dad who was similarly protecting his knee. But that also gave us plenty of opportunities to take pictures of the town on the way down, and as the perspective changed I took far too many pictures. Finally in the town, we turned down a narrow staircase that threaded through an alley only a few feet wide, and 100 stairs later it spit us out in the town square, two hours after we started, right on the harbor.

First things first: We refilled our waterbottles at the fountain, drained them, and refilled them again. Then we sat down for a while to rest, research the town (aka read Rick Steves), and plan our next moves. Two interesting facts. 1: 200 years ago the square didn't exist, just the harbor, and the local businesses had doors that opened right onto the water. This gave the town the name Vernazza - "Little Venice".  Which jives with my dad's estimation that this town is like Venice, if Venice replaced all their canals with stairs. Second interesting fact: the locals all banded together to kill a planned rode extension to connect the town to the others, because they feared it would bring development and change the character of the town. And to be fair, it does have a unique small-town feel that's worth protecting, so good for them.

We walked down the sea-wall and then scampered over some rocks, taking in the views of the harbor (full of swimmers) and the castle, and Ethan and I clambered out a sketchy peninsula to watch the waves crash into a cave. After we decided to get some gelato as we often do. The gelato was next to the path to the old off-harbor beach, but after the floods in 2012 and the subsequent erosion, the beach was washed away and pushed into the natural doorway in the cliff that used to lead to the beach, leaving only a scenic window.  Then, because we hadn't done enough steps today, we decided to climb the old castle! Originally used as a lookout for pirates, the castle was pretty perfunctory - essentially only a watchtower both in antiquity and currently, but still pretty cool. (History fact: The nazi's used the castle as a lookout point, so the top of it was bombed to shit in ww2 and subsequently rebuilt). If you ever do Verranza, I'd recommend going to the castle restaurant/bar for lunch or a beer, so you could chill in the shade and watch the plaza/harbor below, but I don't regret paying the 2 euro to see the top of it. 

Rather exhausted by this point, we called it on Verranza and headed to the train station. We arrived just after the train, so we jumped on it with very little verification of what it was or where it was going. It was the cinque express, it was headed in our direction, and it was leaving in 30 seconds, so we pushed through the crowds and jumped on. For whatever reason, it went only one stop and didn't continue to the town listed as it's final destination, and dropped us off in Monterosso. The conductor said to go to platform one and wait 30m for the next  cinque express, so we followed everyone else and did just that. But within minutes a different train came, and it's routing info said it went to Levanto, so we ignored the conductor and got on it instead. In retrospect, I think it was ran by another company and not covered in our daypasses, but when in Rome do as the Italians do and don't really worry about the specifics of your ticket.

Leaving the train station in Levanto we ran into Adam and Dani! They'd spent the day hiking the routes between the southernmost three towns, and by a fluke of the trains had made the same weird layover choices we had!  So we walked back to our hotel together, changed into our swimsuits, and us menfolk went for a swim in the Mediterranean.  Cool but not cold, possibly slightly saltier than the Atlantic, it was a great way to relax our tired muscles. The only real differences were 1) lots of seaweed,  2) much more crowded on the beach (but not in the water), and 3) the beach was made of pebbles. Between pea-sized and sand, all super smooth, it was a very interesting texture. I dug through the sand looking at all the different pebbles, picking out malachite, marble, granite, etc, and even sea-glass, spanning the same pea-sized to sand-sized range.

We headed home for a shower and a glass of wine, and then headed out to dinner. Our first few (pre-researched) choices were closed or not serving what we'd hoped, but our third choice ended up being across the street from last night's dinner, and it was excellent. The appetizers were delicious - the swordfish-stuffed mussels and lemon-flavored anchovies were particular highlights (weird I know, I typically dislike mussels and despise anchovies). My swordfish was delicious, and as we traded bites around the table the octopus, tuna, trofie noodles, clams, and prawns all proved to be similarly delightful. I would say this was my favorite meal in Italy so far (excluding the wedding feast, which is an obvious outlier), and that's not just the endorphins and wine talking, although I admit they may be slightly coloring my judgement. 

We then walked back to the hotel (stopping, of course, for gelato), did some laundry, journaled, I checked on my timelapse (despite being lashed to the railing with saran wrap, the gopro is at 14 hours and still kicking), and now the rest of the house has headed to bed. I'm going to grab a glass of wine, read a few chapters, and I'll be following them shortly. 

Italy 7 - Siena to Cinque Terra

Today I left my bags with the family (who booked a van), and hiked a few pastoral hours from our villa into Siena.  From there we bounced through a few trains into Cinque Terre - which is beautiful. More on that soon, but today I have no notes. But I always have pictures.

Italy 6 - Siena Itself

 Sienna!

We had an open morning after the wedding, and we decided to do a walking tour of Siena (for whose iconic bricks the color Burnt Sienna is named for). We loaded up the van a little past capacity (there was some seat-sharing going on, and I rode in the cargo area) and made our way 20 minutes into town, parked, and took the escalators from the new-town to the old-town.

Sienna is fascinating because it was the rival to Florence, and they constantly worked to out-do one another. The center of European banking at the time, the banks are built like castle keeps, and date back to the 1400s and are still in operation. And this money poured in to banking financed beautiful cathedrals and the largest secular (clock) tower in Italy.  The competition between the two cities peaked with a plan for a cathedral (and thus dome) even larger than St Marks in Florence, however given the hilly terrain of the city they first had to build up and reinforce the surrounding buildings into a base for the cathedral. They started by filling in the crypt with dirt (now excavated and featuring the old intact frescos in the city), and building an enormous (and ornate) baptistry to support the coming cathedral.

Not my pic, but the back wall and existing cathedral

The existing cathedral was gorgeous, white and black marble with pink highlights, but it would have been dwarfed by the upcoming monsterpiece. They started with the back wall of the nave, but work halted when the black plague hit the city. They lost a third of their residents to the plague, and took it as an admonition from God that their pride had gotten out of hand. They called off the project, and instead - after the plague - used some of the quarried marble to build a shrine thanking the lord for their salvation.

Another highlight of the city is the central plaza, where they hold two annual horse races (and have done since the 1700s). They cover the road with packed dirt, pad the buildings with mattresses, and the city fills the balcony and the plaza itself. Then 10 horses (each one representing a district, chosen by lot and rotation from the 14 districts in the city) set off to do 3 laps of the plaza, for pride and bragging rights. Apparently the horse is all the matters, the jockeys are an afterthought and horses have even won after bucking their riders. I learned all of this from my father, who gave us the walking tour while paging through the Rick Steves guide. Fascinating history.

Walking through the city is great, all hills and alleys, so you're constantly surprised  by great views of ancient towers framed by antique buildings. We stopped for gelato (delicious and oreo-flavored), saw a sculpture by salvador dali, and wandered into random courtyards just to see what was in them. Eventually though, we had to leave as had a tour and wine tasting with the extended family, so we packed back into the van for a twisty ride home. 

After the tasting, I took a quick walk to the neighboring estate, slipping in under the radar to admire their views and bushes, and now I'm jotting down my notes on the terrace:

Italy Day 5 - Bushwalking in Siena

Unfortunately for all of you, a family wedding feels too personal to invite the internet to, so I took the day off from journaling. However, I have one story from before that I can share: Killing some time as everyone else primped and prepared, I wandered out an unlocked gate behind the  far guest houses, which lead to the forest. There I found an wide, gently sloping, and overgrown staircase heading deeper into the woods, flanked by trees that had clearly defined an avenue once, but were now deciding their own destiny. The staircase became more overgrown as it descended, and after a hundred yards the stonework began to blur with the rocks, mushrooms, and fauna as nature reabsorbed the structure.  Continuing in the direction the avenue indicated, I did two miles of off-piste bushwalking, stumbling across game trails that vanished as suddenly as they appeared, twisting through prickerbushes, and scrambling over rocks and roots on all fours. I love this shit. After several scrambles I realized that the height of the cliffs was too regular, the edges too well formed.  Decades of work had gone into terracing the entire hill to extend the grove of olives through the whole area, only for the forest to reclaim them at least a century ago.  However, knowing that they were man-made I searched out (and sometimes found) stones cantilevered diagonally up the faces, crude steps I could use when crossing the lines on this terrain map come to life.  Despite all this being an ubiquitous fact of life for Italians, it felt magical to stumble across ruins older than any city in America, to climb steps climbed by the farmers across time.  The centerpiece, almost fully occluded, was the irrigation canal cut across the forest floor. Maybe 18inches wide, 6 feet deep, with a few inches of water flowing across the bottom. A bit of a challenge to climb into, but delightful to splash into or vault. I eventually reemerged into the contemporary grove and circled back to the villa on actual trails, returning to my apartment to shower off the mud and metamorph into a gentleman.

Italy Day 4 - Florence to Siena

<Unfortunately, technical issues destroyed half of today's blog.  Fortunately, travel-journals are a family-wide compulsion, so I have backups! Enjoy the mix.>

[Dad]  Up at 7, went down the street to a cute patisserie place for the included breakfast. I had a very yummy mortadella sandwich + a delish hot chocolate, and an American donut to go Brice, Eth, Hannah went up to the Duomo to climb. Sue + I strolled up to the Academy Museum to see if we could get in.

[Brice]We woke up relatively early to finish up Florence before our train to Siena for the Wedding.  The younger generation was going to climb all the things, while the older generation had their heart set on seeing David at Academia. 

[Ethan] And so myself, Hannah, and Brice all made our way to the breakfast joint which came with our stay. A couple sandwiches, a couple croissants (pretty good, too), and a coffee later and we were on our way; eating and walking to the Fiore de la Santa Maria.  We wandered through the quaint streets, passing ancient buildings, quaint courtyards and markets, and a couple pretty squares.  Once we came out into the area around the cathedral, we were immediately struck with awe.

The Cathedral, completed in the 1500s, is clad in all sorts of different colors of marble.  The patterning is both exquisite and impeccable.  The bell-tower, completed in 1358, is imposing: reaching an enormous height for the time.  It's almost impossible to get the full height in one picture from the ground.

We started with the tower.  We walked straight into the front doors, scanned our passes, slid our bags across the counter, and stepped through the metal detector that was largely ignored by the attendants.  While that may seem silly, that was the whole of the security in any of these areas.  We then started up the steps, and quickly learned that there is only one staircase.

[Brice] The first stage was about 6 stories of tight stairs, largely straight flights with some tight twists - and occasionally you'd have to pass people going in the other direction. By and large this was pretty easy... unless you had to pass on the spirals... and the down-climbers froze. Polite etiquette is that the upclimbers take the center of the spiral (easier to toe the tiny edges than to heal them) and rest, while the downclimbers slide around the thicker (but by no means thick) outside edge of the step. But not all stair-climbers are created equal, and I often found myself diagonally hugging the central pillar while burning hard pushing up the center on the tips of my toes. Exhausting but fun in a dumb kind of way. Like most my fun.

Anyways, the first landing was a welcome respite, and offered great views of the baptistry and the sides of the cathedral. The cathedral is a magnificent piece of work, the largest freestanding masonry dome in the world, and intricate stonework - not mosaics, but intricate multicolored stonework the whole way up. And now that we were up to the base of the roof, we could see that the details - while following the same motifs at lower levels - were simplified as they approached the top, further from the eyes on the ground. This landing also had a great view of the baptistry - another gorgeous stonework masterpiece with gilt highlights.

So we took all the panoramas, shook our legs out, and went for the next segment. Same as the last time, with pauses to look out all the tiny windows that provide light and ventilation to the stairs.  The second landing, another 4? stories up, was level with the top of the cathedral roof. This let us check out the roofwork and the upper cupolas, which had empty alcoves where statues were conspicuously absent. Again, took all the panoramas, admired the views and the towers (it's basically assassins creed IRL. I wanted to say Etzio!  or Screeeeeeaw every 5 minutes.  Definitely going to have to replay the game now that I've been here). 

Once more into the breach. Final set. 3 more stories, and finally we came out on top of the tower. The views were amazing, but metal grating to protect the pedestrians from us, and protect us from lightning, complicated taking panoramas for once.  We were now 400? <413> steps and 300? <277> feet over the ground, and on level with the balcony around the top of the dome.  The views of the church were worse, but the views of the city were amazing, and the breeze was very welcome.

[Ethan] We spent some time staring at a group of people try to all sit on each other's laps in a circle.  While it looked fairly cult-ish, we finally decided it was likely a class trip.  

Once we'd soaked it all in, we turned around and squeezed back down and out of the tower. On the way down we stopped to check out an old bell that had been retired. It was massive, and I believe it said that it weighed something like 15,000 pounds.

Back down, we saw the long line for the crypts and decided to put it off in favor of the Baptistry.  The baptistry was no less ornate, and certainly more accessible.  We took pause to look at the gilded doors that face the church.  The doors depicted scenes such as Abraham about to kill issac, David killing Goliath, and (perhaps) Cain killing Abel.  They had exquisite detail and perspective for sculpted images, and were done sometime around the 15th century.

[Brice] Beautiful stonework all around, but as we walked the perimeter it started raining. No problem, Ethan said, we'll just go inside. Apparently he got a package deal on tickets. Complete surprise to me and again, almost no line. The baptistry was gorgeous inside, some gilt mosaics in the windows, but otherwise understated, a nice change from the ultra-detailed very busy venetian style. And then we got distracted by the floors. Beautiful patterns, many different styles, and manufactured with perfect tolerances. So we then spent as much time as we spent looking at all the art and architecture just staring at floors. Worth it.

Now, to continue the downward trend, we decided to hit the crypt. It was the crypt or the cathedral next, and the cathedral had a ridiculously long line. So we went for the crypt hoping we could sneak a peak at the cathedral on our way underneath.  It alternated between slight drizzle and sunny while we waited in line, but never hard enough to convince us to buy an umbrella from the enterprising buskers who were prepared for any weather condition.  We got to the front, presented our tickets, and walked straight into the cathedral. Not, like, a part of the cathedral, but the whole thing, just wide open. We'd somehow skipped yet another line.  The cathedral was like the baptistry, understated stonework with blank areas, to draw your eye to the impressive sections (like the windows and the dome) while allowing your eye to rest in between. And again, memories of assassin's creed flashed through my head.

The crypt was smaller than expected, but fascinating. They had it excavated to expose different layers of history, from the roman buildings that had stood on the site, to mosaic floor of the original church (~500AD), to the footings of the cathedral itself (1296AD). Mixed in were a bunch of tombs including Medici's and popes, a few relics in reliquaries (including some dude's skull. <looked it up, oops>), and a very cool diorama showing how it all overlapped. On the way out, we ran into our parents! We caught up briefly where mom told us she "found tickets by looking for the shadiest dude in the plaza" and we scampered off for lunch while they headed down.

[Brian] Sue + I strolled up to the Academy Museum to see if we could get in to see David. We couldn't find the front door, so we ended up walking all the way around the building. Then we had to figure out how to get tickets. We could buy a reserved entry at 1pm - which would be a little late for our preferences. Or we could stand in line for an hour -= which sounded horrible to me. Some guy offered to let us into hits tour group for 40Euro each, which I would have accepted. But Sue would not. Eventually she found a scalper with 9:30 timed tickets, which we bought for $25 each. 

[Sue] So we were inside in no time. We saw Michelangelo's Prisoners (the unfinished sculptures) and David at the end of the hall. 14' tall + quite stunning! Much other art as well, mostly religious art. The museum took 90 minutes, and then we walked to the Duomo - church of Florence - and took many photos of outside. There was a huge line to get into the cathedral via the free entrance, but used our online tickets to visit the baptistry before heading to the crypt. As we went in the side door we saw Brice, Ethan + Hannah coming out.

[Brice] We had 45 minutes until our Duomo tickets, so we grabbed a quick lunch at a ricebowl place, a drink, and a few minutes off of feet.  Essentials taken care of, we went to the Duomo line!  It was a worrying long line, but as soon as our ticket-time came, the entire line flowed right in. The climb was much easier than the tower. There were a lot of landings, and we only moved at the speed of the line which was pretty casual. Plus we had to stop to stick a phone or a camera out every window and vent we could find.  The first landing was in the cupola we'd seen from the belltower, and inside were all the statues missing from the empty alcoves! They were being restored after centuries of sketchy fixes (one had been coated 2" thick with sawdust and plaster paste as a sort of paper-mache make-do protection). Next stop was the lower ring around the inside of the cathedral, under the dome.  It was a narrow walkway far above the ground, with only a railing and some plexiglass between us and the beautiful floor 100 feet away. I loved it, of course, and took a lot of photos over the plexiglass until a guard politely and loudly requested I stop doing so. We continued to wind up and around the tower, until we got to the point where we could no longer walk around the dome and instead had to walk up it. <end of Brice's journal>

[Ethan] As we continued upwards, we spiraled up for a while, peaking out of the windows, and found ourselves between the inner and outer shells of the dome. we traversed around there for a few segments before climbing up the inner curve of the dome and exiting onto the stairs of the top of the cupola.  When we ascended to the top, the view was impeccable.  Close to the tower, but unhindered by a lightning-cage and very satisfying.  We had enough time to look around, and then it was time to head back down.  A relatively quick descent later and we found ourselves back in the square.  From there, we regrouped with Brice, who had stayed behind for some shots, and returned to the convent to use the restroom and collect our bags.

[Brian] We all met up back at the hotel, and got a cab to the train station. That was fun - he drove a little quickly, honking at people in his way, ran a couple lights as they changed, went up some very narrow alleys, made several sharp (more than 90*) turns, seemed to reverse direction twice, and then drove across the edge of a plaza filled with people + bikes but no cars.

Got there, and after 10 mins our train was cancelled. We went to inquire, and the line was about 50 ppl long. So as Sue + Ethan waited in line, I went to a machine + bought new tickets for another connecting train. We had to hustle to make it, but did. Then  B-E-H almost got off at the wrong stop and had to jump back on!

[Ethan] Brice checked online and saw that there were no more stops before our transfer.  He came back to let us know that we'd be cutting it close, so we gathered our bags and, as soon as we stopped, we hopped out.  Hannah and I immediately had a bad feeling, and sure-enough, when we checked the nearby sign, the name did not match our transfer station.  I dove onto the train and Hannah squeezed in as the doors closed.  Brice, apparently, sprinted for an open door out of sight.  As we pulled away, Hannah and I looked for Brice on the platform, but didn't see him anywhere.  Without knowing the fate of him (or mom and dad for that matter), we rode the one remaining stop to Empoli.  We got off there and had to run down the stairs, across the crossway, and up the other stairs into the train on the platform that was waiting to take us to Siena.  Within a minute the doors were closed.  And somehow, we all made it into the same train-car!

After such an exciting train journey so far, the remainder was very relaxed.  It was an hour of journaling, listening to podcasts, and figuring out next steps.  When we finally arrived in Siena, we got out and moved to the exit.  Dad and I picked up some lunch foods for the next day, and we met back up with the fam outside the train station.  At that time, we learned that Adam and Dani were waiting by the Taxi Stand right across the street.  We went out and caught up with them for 10 minutes before their ride arrived.  From there we had to wait another 30 minutes for two more taxis to come and collect the people ahead of us, and then us.  They say that taxis are nowhere to be found when it rains, and that is apparently extra true in Italy.

<I took a walk around the grounds before dinner, as the storms rolled in>

One more (only slightly less) harrowing taxi ride later and we arrived at the Villa!  We made our way to the room, hastily got ready, and then made it to the hall where we were having the welcome celebration.

[Sue] We're in a lovely room w/ kitchen, bedroom, living area, and bath. Funny though that bidet + toilet are all in the shower. By this time we had 1/2 hr to ready for Welcome Party = with a delicious dinner of beef ribs, chicken (grilled), onions, sausage, tomato/bread specialty, potatoes, rice/veggie dish + even tiramisu for dessert. <Bride> looked beautiful in a white southern belle style gown + <Groom> wore his grandfather's sportscoat.

[Brian] It was a great party, with lots of wine and great food cooked outside on grills. We talked the whole night, to current and future family. Very nice party, lots of fun, everyone very happy! It rained overnight, and with the shutters closed it was dark → very good sleeping!!

[Sue] Another amazing day. We saw all we wanted in Florence AND made it to the party ON TIME.  But kept moving all day - 17,924 Steps! Thank you Lord for your blessings of Today! 

[Ethan]:  I fell asleep whilst journaling... my notes end with "other final pice even if anecdoges. nd I think the foffeesd"