Just Another Night and Day and Night in Paradise

Our first evening in Italy’s Cinque Terre ended in a local restaurant run by the Passini family which had opened especially for our tour group. Mama Passini gave us a pesto making demonstration complete with mortar and pestle right before dinner and then we were served her pesto lasagna that melted in our mouths, followed by swordfish with capers, topped off by a scrumptious semifreddo, which is the Italian version of ice cream cake. It was wonderful.

Their son Marco Passini, is a photographer of the Cinque Terre who sold us his calendars after dinner.

We made our way around Monterosso al Mare after dinner, poking our heads into the little souvenir shops and wandering through the ridiculously picturesque streets. Thank goodness I was able to get some retail therapy and buy a turquoise necklace in a shop that was stuffed to the rafters with goodies and was run by a charming Italian woman who called us all “nice ladies.”

The biggest challenge of the trip was waiting for us the next morning. As I mentioned before, Cinque Terre means “Five Lands” in Italian, and specifically means the five villages--Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore,which are connected by steep and winding paths. Five of us had decided to trek these paths and started off around ten o’clock in the morning.

We had been warned that the path between Monterosso and Vernazza was the steepest, but I don’t think I fully appreciated its difficulty (or my out-of-shapeness) until we had been climbing for about half an hour. But all our efforts were rewarded at every turn with the most spectacular views imaginable.

Approximately two and a half hours later, we five had reached Vernazza

and headed down through the little village for a well-earned lunch at a waterside café.

We made a not-so-secret pact to take the train from Vernazza to the fourth town,Manarola, and then walk on the last trail, the Via Amore, to Riomaggiore. At Riomaggiore, we caught the ferry back to Monterosso. We later found out that almost everyone on our tour who took the trails did the same thing we did, with the train-ferry combo to ensure survival. In our defense, it was awfully hot that day. And we did do the hardest trail.

That evening was the Feast of the Assumption and all the children in the village of Monterosso went to church and then went to the water’s edge and placed their “prayers” in the form of a candle on a little boat, out into the Ligurian Sea. After some time, their “prayers” floated way out into the water and the view of all those sparkling candles in the dark waters under a full moon was one of the most beautiful things you could ever imagine.

It seems somehow fitting that those prayer candles were our final memories of the Cinque Terre, a place so beautiful that it seems like Heaven on Earth. We lingered along the seaside path, watching those little lights dancing on the waves and knowing that no camera could ever truly capture the beauty of that sight. If there had been a way to cancel the rest of our tour and just stay for the next week in the Cinque Terre, I think many of us would have done it. It was gorgeous.

Hitting the Wall

There’s a lot to see in Italy, and if you are on a Rick Steves’ eleven day Heart of Italy tour, as my husband John and I were, you can bet that you are going to see most of it.

So, although we were fairly well knackered from our day and a half of touring Florence, we had the sneaking suspicion that things were going to get even more intense.

We dragged ourselves out of bed (still not un-jet-lagged enough to get a solid night’s sleep), packed up, raced down to breakfast and did the Rick Steves’ carry-and-drag of our suitcases out of the charming Hotel Accademia and down the narrow streets to a place wide enough for our bus. It was here that we met Fausto, our trusty, always cheerful bus driver, luggage handler, and beverage provider.

Thus began Day Three.

We were on the bus!

Our first stop was Lucca, a town surrounded by walls so thick that there is a wide bike/ pedestrian path around the top!

Our tour guide Karin assured us that even if we were wearing a skirt (that would be me), we should all take the opportunity to rent bicycles and ride them around the top of the walls, the better to experience Lucca.

Well, we did it. John and I did rent bikes and we did make it all the way around the wall, stopping for a brief tour through a flea market (those seem to be sadly the same wherever you are) and finishing with a delightful lunch at a sidewalk café (Insalata mista-mixed salad for me and delectable lasagna for John).

Sadly, between the biking and flea market and eating, we really didn’t get much of a chance to see the old Roman ruins of Lucca, but you can see where my priorities are. Exercise, of course, first, and food and shopping later!

After lunch, we even found another gelateria and treated ourselves to a double dip cone of Italy’s genius version of ice cream.

From there it was a long bus to the place that is at the top of my list for the title of Heaven on Earth—the Cinque Terre (Five Lands). These are five picturesque, cliff-hugging towns along the Ligurian Sea that, for centuries, were only connected by footpaths. Now there is a train (thank goodness), as well as a ferry in good weather.

We rode the bus as far as we could and then boarded a train to take us to Monterosso al Mare where we would be spending the next two nights.

As we rolled our suitcases out of the train station, we were knocked out by the view. The bluest blue sea sparkled in front of us as we made our way up the street past the flower-covered buildings to our little hotel, the Punta Mesco. We all made plans to meet at the beach, which was actually a narrow rock beach (or shingle), and soon we were merrily floating in the sea.

We enjoyed our moment’s respite and then had to scurry back to our hotel to change.

We had a date for supper and it turned out to be very memorable!

Italian Trifecta: Art, Gelato, and Pizza

Our second day in Italia dawned bright and exceedingly early, especially for those of us suffering from jet-lag who had only just fallen back to sleep about four a.m. But awake we did, and stumbled down to a delightful breakfast in the charming Hotel Accademia.
We walked over to the Uffizi Gallery and met our tour guide Ricardo, who masterfully led us through the maze of rooms that once were the offices of the celebrated Medici family that are filled to the rafters with priceless works of art. Ricardo gave us a brief history of art from the Dark Ages through to the late Renaissance by skillfully comparing paintings of the Madonna and Child through the ages. I felt as though I were at a college lecture.
The trouble with the Uffizi is that it is so HUGE that there comes a moment when, unless you actually ARE an art historian, you feel as though your brain is full, and you need a change of pace.
We adjourned to the Gallery’s delightful cafeteria for a glass of wine and a salad and were thus fortified to make our assault on the Boboli Gardens and Pitti Palace.
We crossed the Arno River over the Ponte alla Grazie (Bridge of Thanks?) and began searching for a way to the gardens. We got a bit lost, and ended up climbing approximately one million stairs on our way to the top of a hill which afforded us a magnificent view of Florence, complete with the Duomo (the Dome, i.e. major church) as well as the fabled Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), which used to be used by butchers until the Medici had them banished from the bridge and replaced by jewelers. The Medici family also built a second story on the bridge which led them from the town hall to the Pitti Palace, their rather spacious digs across the Arno.
At any rate, we climbed this unending staircase and took in the views, but not to worry. We soon rewarded ourselves with what to become our daily indulgence—gelato. Gelato is Italian for the best ice cream (actually made with whole milk, not cream) that you have ever tasted in your life. It is smooth, it is creamy, it comes in unimaginable flavors, and yes, we were already addicted to this lovely confection. I feel I can say, without fear of contradiction, that gelato makes life worth living.
So we climbed a hill and had a gander at Florence, after which we descended that steep staircase and wandered along the River Arno, finally ducking into the Pitti Palace (circa 1458), home of Medici family and the rulers of Tuscany, which consists of big, big rooms, lots of art and those elusive Boboli Gardens tucked behind it.
After a brief, obligatory stop at a café for a glass of wine and a cheese platter, we dashed back to our hotel between the raindrops (actually the only inclement weather on our trip), and went out for some authentic Italian (thin crust) pizza. Of course, no self-respecting Italian goes out to dinner before 8 o’clock or later, so our 7:30 dinner time made us Italian early birds.
Then it was time to get back to our rooms and try to pack everything up for our next day’s journey to the magical seaside villages of the Cinque Terre, by way of Lucca.