Cinque Terre

Disclaimer: I'm not sure how this happened but I've got two posts on our day trip to Cinque Terre. But I wrote them so I'm keeping both. 

Disclaimer Done: Let's go way back in time (i'm writing this in November 2018) to a place in Italy I'm sure you'll have heard about. I say this because nine out of ten tourists we ran into spoke with an American brogue. I blame this on Rick Steves, on cruise ships, on Cinque Terre's own stunning beauty that makes it so damn picturesque.

But it's also a victim to its own success. The town is literary crumbling under the weight of tourists' feet. Rockslides and landslides are common and CNN has listed it as one of the places NOT to visit in 2018.

As the cinque in the title would suggest, the region is made up of five separate villages: Monterosso a Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. A train runs up and down the region and connects all five villages. For the more adventurous, you can walk from one to the other.

We were on a bit of a reunion tour with the retired couples we'd taken the wine tour with on the previous day and so we took the train, stopping in each village for an hour or so. Most of my photos have disappeared; here's what's left.

Manarola is the town with perhaps the most iconic view. The town's residents depend on tourism to stay afloat but some terrible flooding inundated the village in previous years and brought it to a standstill.

Fegina Beach in Monterosso, the longest stretch of beach in this little haven.

When my pictures one day return, I shall update this further. But for the time being, considering it's taken me this long to post, I'm going to settle for happiness in there being anything at all to document our time in Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre National Park

Cinque Terre has long been on my beautiful places I need to go list.  Unfortunately, I missed the memo that it was on everyone else's list too.  But before we knew this information, Paul and I paid a hefty touring fee to make our way to the 5 villages built into cliffs with our geriatric wine tasting tour group from the previous day.  We convened at the mini-bus near Lucca train station bright and early in order to journey towards the sea.

Cinque Terre National Park is a series of five villages built into the jagged cliffs of the Ligurian Coast with a series of winding paths and trails connecting each of the villages.  Ambitious travelers make the journey between each village on foot; everyone else gets on the train-cum-monorail that makes four or five stops per village each hour.

Part of the reason for Cinque Terre's popularity is because of its stunning beauty and status as a UNESCO World Heritage site; but then Rick Steves wrote a travel guide detailing the ins and outs of the region and every mainstream traveller with Italy on the brain made it a focal point.  Then the guide was translated into every european language and the hordes kept on coming.  We were confronted by groups of French, Italian, German and Scandinavian pensioners at every point.  Hordes of rude travelers who looked like your granny but acted nothing like the prototypical cookie baking, hug giving lovelies that told you stories about growing up during harder times.  These grannies pushed, shoved, cut in front of you in the gelato queue.  They used their canes and zimmer frames to chop you down as you tried to get a place on the train or walk up a path.

Not impressed.

Fortunately, the few Americans we ran into on the trip (plus the ones in our tour group) were quiet, friendly and avoided all this pushing.  As I glared at Yvette, the bozo-red-haired French tour guide who shoved me aside to get my seat, I felt pride for my nation.

Despite all the insanity, the stunning scenery failed to disappoint. We only journeyed to three of the five villages--Manarola, Vernazza and Riomaggiore.  The full effects of the flooding of 2011 could still be seen in many places but the communities seemed to come together and help each other rebuild.

The Village of Monterosso.  If you look super closely on the rocks, you'll notice an intrepid (read: stupid) Asian man.  He decided to go scrambling up the rocks during high tide and a wave crept up (read: roared up as they had been doing consistently for the past hour) and whooshed him away.  He disappeared into the mist, hit the rocks and climbed back up clutching his digital camera and other technological paraphernalia.  Darwin Awards were made for this man.  

Next stop, the village of Vernazza.

With a small, sandy beach and cute cafes, this was my favourite of the three.

Last stop, the village of Riomaggiore. It's the biggest village by quite a bit and we ended up in a shop doing some more olive oil, wine and truffle oil tasting. Paul tasted the local gnocchi and I had a beautiful, beautiful bowl of seafood pasta.  Because of the size of the village, it was easier to forget that a million and one grannies wanted to elbow us out of their existence.  The sun even made a more than temporary peek from behind the breezy clouds. 

Fed, watered and gelatoed, we ventured back to our little tour group for the world's best car nap avoiding most of the rest of the day's annoyances.  And really, I'm glad we went because Cinque Terre is hard to explain until you're there.  But we went in April. It makes me wonder what July would be like.  And if I were offering any advice about the whole experience, i'd venture to say you should spend a night in one of the villages--away from all the day tourists, it might be a completely different experience.  And I can imagine a village full of cliffs and stars might be a lot more like the Italy Rick Steves wrote about.  

Because he definitely didn't mention any cane-wielding grannies. 

A Tuscan Wine Tour

Spoiler alert: this gets messy.

Because I agreed to accompany Paul to San Siro Stadium, the home of both AC and FC Milan, he agreed to accompany me on a day trip through the wine making parts of Tuscany. Paul is not much of a wine drinker but I happen to be partial to a tipple or three of red. Despite their ubiquitousness with the region, tours of this sort don't come cheap. But we stumped up the roughly £70 each to take part and moved on with our lives. 

The next morning we arrived at the train station, our pickup point, promptly for an all-day festivus only to see no one else loitering. It took us another twenty minutes to twig that perhaps the three near-retirement age couples decked in running trainers (no signs of running qualities in the individuals) and loosely fitting jeans were our fellow participants. It just so transpires that the median age of a tourist in Tuscany over the Easter holidays is roughly 65. And American.

Our not-nearly-geriatric tour group consisted of two retired teachers, a doctor and his wife and a couple who were doing the tour circuit again and again--they'd been on this same wine tour twice already in the last month.  They hailed from Chicago, Oklahoma, Maryland and were charmed that we were young and traveling. In the first twenty minutes, we became everyone's adopted children. They wanted to know where we were from, how we met, when we were getting married.  They probed. We laughed. 

First Stop: Vinci 

As can probably be deduced from the name, Vinci is the home of the famous Leonardo da Vinci.  It was a small town tucked into the Tuscan foothills--verdant valleys lay in every direction and included the hill where da Vinci tried and failed at creating a flying contraption.

Today the town is an homage to all things Leonardo:

The church where little Leo was baptised 

Second Stop: Wine! 

From there, we made our way to a tiny winery even further into the windy roads of Tuscany.  We arrived at a nondescript farmhouse to be greeted by a woman who'd been in the business for quite some time.  

She showed us around the barrels, the process and the refinery itself before leading us to a large rectangular table that housed breads, meats, olives and oil.  

And then the drinking began. First wine. Then proprietors led us to a beautifully adorned table and fed us olive oil, bread and charcuterie. 

We got into an extensive conversation about where we were from and how we all came to be here in this moment. Dr Ralph's wife mentioned Oklahoma, I asked her about any fear of tornados--it's a common association. She burst into a fit of drunken crying. Her brother's house had been one of the many victims of the 2011 Joplin tornado that ripped through the community. As Paul looked at me like some kind of monster, someone passed her another glass of wine commented on the aftermath of kindness and goodness in people and the moment passed. 

And because Paul hates wine, he took to throwing back each bigger-than-a-tasting-size glass back with aplomb.  He treated them like shots--quadruple the regular size shots but shots nonetheless.  The volume in the room rose and we staggered out to be met with grappa which I can only describe as what it must taste like to swallow paint thinner.  My throat and stomach burned for an hour.  

As the wine flowed, our hostess decided to opportunise on the moment by bringing out the goods for sale. This involved lots of conversations on legal allowances, transporting wine in suitcases, brushes with TSA. Our friends bought generously and we opted for some beautiful, beautiful olive oil. 

Sales done, we all bundled into the mini bus for one final journey home. Paul was given more advice on his need to propose to me and to get the family started. And because it was all with good intention, we laughed along and tucked well-meaning advice to the back of our minds. At the end of the hour-long commute back, our tour guide gave a plug for the other tours their company ran. 

And thus, four hours later, eight adults piss drunk in a mini-bus outside of Lucca agreed on a reunion tour to Cinque Terre the next day.

Salute to the Coffee Nation

Never has a country more revered the dark caffeinated liquid that millions of people bow to every morning.  From walk up standing espresso bars to the humble train station vending machine, I must argue that Italians absolutely know wheat they're doing when it comes to addictive beverages.  And there's an addiction for everyone. 

Coffee's embedded into the culture--old men, young men, groups of women cluster in piazzas, sipping their mini-mugs in Armani sunglasses looking ever so effortless.  

It's the British equivalent of pub culture.  Americans take it to a different extreme--big cups in air conditioned cafes.  But essentially the root of all this sit-back-and-relax must have started in one square or another in this ancient Italian nation.  

Lucca, Toscana

Tuscany has my heart although I imagine that everyone who makes their way to Lucca probably feels this way. It's one part medieval mecca, another part culinary delight. Throw in ample opportunities to sit in a piazza in April and sun yourself and you just can't lose. 

We made our way to the tiny but charming B&B La Romea and were greeted with an ancient property updated into five-bedrooms of very affordable bliss smack in the middle of the city. The owners, Gaia and Guilio, were helpful in responding to our questions and offering advice about our home away from home. Later in the week we caught Giulio having a little passeggiata, snacking on bread he pulled out of a pocket and smiling to himself as he strolled. Thus, despite Lucca being very much on the tourist trail, a whole host of locals love this little city as much as we did. 

The narrow streets of the city leave it to be best explored on foot. The daytime saw lots of day trippers head into the city only to leave on their way to Pisa, San Gimignano or other wine-able towns further afield. Sunday is a day of rest in Italy and so most things were closed; even the day trippers stayed away and we got to enjoy a true pause in our busy travels.

Tucked away from the main centre is the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, a public square built by the Romans in the traditional shape of a Roman amphitheatre (hence the name). The streets surrounding it all slope inwards waiting to reveal the goodness in the middle. 

This was perhaps one of the more touristed parts of the city and so we ambled through, took some photos and made our way to less frequented parts of the city. 

Smack on the opposite side of town, a fairly short walk away, the Duomo di San Martino does its churchy thing. 

We happened to be in Lucca on the Sunday after Easter, which holds a special reverence for the local people. It's a day where Luccans celebrate their liberation from Pisa, an event that dates back to 1369, way before the Italian state even existed. The emancipation was bloodless and involved large sums of money changing hands. But the locals celebrate with lots of drums, flags and fabulous costumes. 

From here, the central piazza is a short wander away. San Michele in Foro lies smack in the middle and we sat and watched a host of student musicians busk their way around the square. 

The further afield you head, the wider the streets become and the more the trees peek through. April really is a beautiful time to be here.

Cycling the City Walls 

The town of Lucca is surrounded by renaissance-era walls, built as defensive ramparts, that, over the years everyone thought were a good idea to keep. We approved. The walls take you 4.2km (the second longest city walls in Europe, next to Nicosia in Cyprus) around the city and offer expansive views of the Tuscan hills on one side and the ancient city on the other. Hiring a bike is cheap and there are plenty of businesses that will happily help you part with your money. Once on the walls there's plenty of space to ride at your own pace, stop for a viewpoint, picnic, coffee or gelato. 

Food 

And because all that cycling will make a person hungry, we made our way to one of the many outdoor tables back in Lucca proper. Pizza, pasta, prosciutto, whatever takes your fancy is most findable here.

What's not to love? 

Genoa

Genoa is the place you visit when you're sick of tourists. When you want to see how Italy really works. When you want legit gelato, legit hole-in-the-wall sandwich shops. When you want to stay in a former palazzo turned B&B for cut rate prices.

And so we started our journey of the Boot in this very working port city bordering the Ligurian Sea. We'd later go on to visit some of the tourist big hitters like Tuscany, Cinque Terre and Milan. And they're magnificent, don't get me wrong. But Genoa holds no expectations and that made it all the more interesting. 

Because just about everywhere in Italy is packed with history, we weren't surprised to find out that Italy's sixth largest city used to be home to one of the most thriving ports in the country. By used to I mean like for seven centuries. And with that, came money, power and beautiful architecture all around. 

Which is how we got to stay in the beautiful B&B Domitilla, up a series of a hundred stairs (or a journey on the city's funicular). The location in a converted palazzo offers a vantage point of the harbour and there's a stunning communal terrace to sun yourself if that's your thing. 

Our only drama lay in finding the place. The directions, translated into English on the website, told us that, from the bus station, we needed to turn right at the semaphore. Paul wracked his brain; his Italian hadn't covered this term. This was pre-the days of free mobile data in Europe and Googling wasn't an option. And so we circled and circled and Paul continued to scan the Italian archives. Twenty minutes later, his Teach Me 1000 Words of Italian lessons with his dad came through. Semaphore=traffic light. 

Fortunately, that was our biggest drama of our trip. Our three days here consisted of pottering around the old town, another UNESCO listed site, taking a trip to the aquarium and wandering the Porto Antico, a harbour re-invented for evening passeggiatas.

In the old town, there's most definitely a faded glamour. The streets feel like they need a bit of love but people are still very much living their lives outdoors. Genoa is experiencing a crisis much like the smaller towns of Italy; there's a rapidly ageing population and young people tend to move away to the bigger cities where more jobs exist. Birth rate is declining and there's not a huge pull for young people to stay. 

Pink flamingo graffiti dotted the city and although we couldn't quite get to the bottom of it, we were fairly convinced it had something to do with prostitution. Try searching that on the internet though...

I'm aware that I haven't painted a particularly rosy picture of Genoa but we did really enjoy our time there. My camera wasn't able to capture the nuances of sitting in a piazza at lunchtime and watching workers stream out of their office buildings and into the holes in the wall that were actually elaborate delis. The sandwiches were epic--all kinds of meat and bread and cheese in colourful combinations appeared from every corner of the town centre. Gelato, likewise (and covered in an entry entirely of its own). And people stopped and took the time to pause and meet friends for a chat, even in the pouring rain. 

As for us, we continued to explore, finding gems of working city life. 

And to us, that was in no way disappointing. Although I couldn't name the various tourist sites and destinations because we didn't even scratch the surface, Genoa is definitely worth a visit.