Pen-Ultimate Post

Do you remember my post on 1st April entitled “Nearly Lost In Translation” about my precious lost calligraphy pen???

I am pleased to say, that when I arrived home, there on the top of the huge pile of mail was the self addressed envelope I had sent to the Tabac in Italy, and inside, lo and behold, my pen!  Happiness and joy.  It might not look important to anyone else, but it is to me, and it was a major challenge to get it back.  Result.  Joyous.

The Italian Riviera

We tootled down the coast road towards the French border. Our final stop in Italy was the quiet seaside town of San Bartolomeo al Mare, wedged in between the medieval fortress of Cervo and the pleasant, busier commercial centre of Diano Marina. After one day of rain the sun came out, and so did the locals. 

We stayed at the boutique Hotel Le Palme, right on the beach.	Cervo
We could have stayed here…has it had a $300 million upgrade recently?

Portofino

We were staying in Santa Margherita which was only 5km from Portofino so we felt morally obliged to go there.  The road is very narrow and stressful to drive because you never know what you’re going to meet head on at the next bend.  The town is quaint and picturesque without a doubt, but very over-rated and to our minds, not necessarily a must see these days.

….. our best attempt at the standard Portofino picture, on a dull day, and cutting out all the construction work

Lenny & Dot invest in a Piaggio – the only way to get around on these narrow streets

What the…??? If you leave your rhinoceros parked in the main street,  they WILL tow it away

Genoa

We took the train from Santa Margherita into Genoa, a very enjoyable 40 minute ride with lovely views of the seaside. The city has a prosperous and cosmopolitan feel to it. Genoa has a proud nautical history which has been celebrated in recent years by the rejuvenation of the old port area and the opening of a maritime museum and Europe’s largest aquarium. But apart from a quick walk around the port we didn’t visit any of that so here’s what you’re getting instead.

Now where’d I leave my bike??	This lovely old guy played his evocative sax music to the passers by …..	….. he is right in the middle of this covered arcade on the main shopping street – you had to be there to appreciate the  fantastic acoustics
The impressive fountain in the central piazza		A flavour of the cultural heritage in the narrow streets of the old town

Santa Margherita Ligure

We headed for Rapallo which looked like a good base for visiting Genoa and Portofino. We got caught up in one-way peak hour traffic and ended up 5 km down the road in Santa Margherita Ligure. It was a great spot so we stayed for 2 nights.

A view of Santa Margherita…and the world’s cutest public toilets

Rocking on through Italy

It might not sound like the usual tourist fare, but we have seen some impressive natural rock formations on our travels. Equally interesting has been the way architects and builders have coped with the dramatic landscape.

Lerici and the ‘Cinque Terre’

Lerici stands at the easternmost end of the Ligurian coast. The town was mostly closed when we visited, apart from the dodgem cars and fairground attractions with blaring music in the main square which didn’t enhance our experience of the ‘Gulf of the Poets’. I bet it wasn’t like this when Shelley and Byron arrived.

The ‘Cinque Terre’ are 5 tiny fishing villages built on impossibly rocky outcrops. They are so picturesque that they are now completely overwhelmed by tourists in the summer. We visited at a good time as it wasn’t too busy, but we both felt that these villages now have an artificial air to them – more theme park than ‘real’ Italy. As you can see, they are most spectacular when viewed from the narrow energy-sapping road which snakes around this part of the coast (most people aren’t silly enough to drive, as we did, and go by boat or train instead).

Corniglia

Riomaggiore

Manarola

Marina di Massa

It was raining and dark when we arrived in Marina di Massa, but we were pleased to have found the Hotel Italia with a wonderful Italian host.  He was delighted to see my brand new passport with its flash microchip and Maori text.  He had been watching a Discovery Channel programme about Polynesia and asked us about the Maoris at every opportunity. He laughed when we showed him how to hongi.  Massa is a large town, just the next one along from Carrara where all the Italian marble comes from, and Marina di Massa is its waterfront.  The hotel was built as a private villa about 100 years ago and would have been magnificent in its day.

Hotel Italia is the tall pink building – it was a really peaceful time to be in this location

This is how it looks in Summer – why would you wanna?

Looking up the main street of Marina di Massa from the pier

Shampoo left behind on the local fountain (not ours!)

Travel Disasters; Chapter 4 – a nice cup of tea …

Some things are just different in Italy … our Tuscan villa was exceptionally well appointed, however the shower was just the hose type arrangement connected to the taps of the bath, so one had to be creative about bathing.  Because the Italians only drink espresso coffee that you can stand your spoon up in, they don’t seem to use electric kettles, so to make tea, we had to boil water on the stove.  We drink a lot of tea and soon got tired of that, so we bought an electric kettle.  Yay … life is back to normal and we’ve had lots of cups of nice tea.  Today we packed up to move camp – while I was attending to the suitcases, Linz packed up our food supplies, odds and ends, and the kettle.   After a long day on the road, half of it in the rain, and arriving at a new location after dark, we got to our hotel room and I filled our lovely kettle (through the spout, without opening the lid) to make a nice well deserved cuppa.   I caught a slight whiff of soap and thought “hmmm Linz must have put the kettle in the same bag as the washing powder”.  Jug boiled, tea made, ahhhhh nice and hot, and tastes full bodied and delicious.  It was soooooo good that Linz decided to make the second cuppa – he opened the lid of the kettle to refill it, and hauled out of it ….. wait for it ………. my face cloth, my shower cap, and our bath sponge (hence the soap smell).  All had been nicely boiled in the kettle and the liquid poured over our tea bags creating a whole new way of taking your daily cuppa.   Apparently Linz thought it was a great space saving idea to stuff the toiletries in the jug when he packed up.  Isn’t that just a man’s thought pattern for you!   It’s funny now as I write it, but it sure wasn’t funny at the time !!!!!!!!!  Our standard question now is “would you like your tea with a bit of shower cap, or just a lump of bath sponge???”

On the way to the coast: Lucca – Livorno and disaster averted

We sat at Hong Kong airport, awaiting our next flight We got there way too early and had time to kill that night We met two Pommie tourists who gave us some advice … when you get to Italy, Lucca’s very nice Today when we left Greve, headed for the coast We spent some time in Lucca but there was nothing much to boast ”Let’s head out to Livorno, a place I want to see That is where he was born and raised, my Modigliani” We drove around the city, in rain and looming dark Found a central hotel; right outside a handy park Went inside to check the room and the daily rate Returned to find beside our car il dodgo and his mate We should explain that we have a bright red number plate Which makes us easy to mark out as tasty foreign bait The dodgos scurried off as we approached the boot But we felt sick that we were nearly robbed of all our loot This ain’t no place for us, we said, and belted up the coast To stay at Marina di Massa, with a friendly Italian host

A Pisa The Action, by Eileen Dover

the cheap tourist zoomed in shot

this is how far we really were from it

Both of us have been here before and neither of us wanted to go again.  As we took the ring road round Pisa on our way to Livorno, we got a glimpse without having to wade our way through all those stall holders trying to sell you a Pisa keyring.  Result.

and the blog last week came to you from … Greve

Sadly, we say goodbye to Simone Franconi, our wonderful host at Casa Forese

the local internet cafe owners were really good to us

no wait, he might not be blogging, it might just be the ritual checking of the football scores

Communication Challenges

as at Friday 26th March …..***** If you’re wondering what has happened to us – it is that we are having much trouble achieving internet access at the moment, so bear with us.  In hotels where they say they have internet access, the signal is so poor it doesn’t work.  In towns where they have “free” WiFi access in the main square, you actually have to pay for it, but because they close town for a 3 hour siesta, there is no-one to pay, and the timing just hasn’t worked out for us.  The actual Internet Cafes only let you use their computers, which is no use to us because all our photos etc are on the netbook.  So, we are rising to these challenges and continuing to post when and from wherever we can *****

San Giuseppe Festival and the “Frittelle”

In Montefioralle each year they have a 2 day Festival celebrating San Giuseppe (St Joseph as we knew him).  They set up several mobile serving caravans in the Square, and cook these crazy delicacies called Frittelle, made from rice, oil, sugar, orange rind and I’m not sure what else, deep fried & served hot doused with icing sugar – here’s the process …

They used to drop the mixture in by hand, but there were too many burnt hands, so now they drop it in from this machine.  They’re about the size of a heaped teaspoon.

The vat holds 200L of boiling oil & it’s changed every day.  Half a dozen men swirl the Frittelle round the vat until they’re done (about 2 minutes) then drain them. It seems a serious affair

This is the local restaurant owner, and this is how you take Frittelle home – a bit like fish’n’chips

Then you eat them, they are divine.  In our case, washed down with Vinsanto, a fortified wine similar to sherry, courtesy of the Franconi family.  Then you have dreadful indigestion all night, oh Mama yessirreee

The parents of our villa’s owner, Carla and Forese Franconi, invited us in to their home in Montefioralle; it’s hundreds of years old.  Carla made some Frittelle for us specially and she is a fabulous cook.  We felt honoured and were intrigued to see one of these buildings from the inside and observe how they carry out their daily life.  Truly fascinating.  We have walked round and round lots of hilltop towns with tiny cobbled streets and often wondered what the houses are like inside, so how lucky were we?  We managed 3 hours of animated gestural lively conversation even though 1 of us doesn’t speak Italian and 2 of them don’t speak English.  Linz’s Italian has had a rapid dust off and he is coping superbly as both communicator and translator, and his assistant, the Vinsanto, helped to jolly the evening along.

A Tile of Two Cities

Amazing escalator subway in Siena…..

Old and falling to bits but nevertheless made with love by the school children of Greve in Chianti …..

Siena

Another day trip out from our base in Greve found us in Siena.  Driving through town in traffic when you can’t read Italian and don’t know how you’re going to get where you want to is a bit stressful.  Today Linz only told me twice that I was on the wrong side of the road - things are looking up.  Somehow we fluked finding a carpark that was at the base of a building offering a free ride on a set of five escalators that saved our thighs and kindly transported us up to the hilltop main square in Siena.  The tiles in the escalator building were more interesting than Siena (see post on Tiles later).  Oh Diane, really, how could you say that?

Happy, happy, happy, joy, joy, joy, too much wine

Couldn’t get the whole square in

The face of the Cathedral

I like your ‘at

Laundry Siena Style