Pisa & Lucca

After Cinque Terre we had time for a half-day stop in Pisa before going to Lucca to stay with our family friends Jim and Deb. We ditched our bags for a few hours at the Pisa train station luggage storage, and headed out to see the tower and cathedral.

So, maybe this sounds stupid, but I didn't expect the tower to be quite so dramatically leaning. It really is amazing that it can still stand! And what a funny predicament for the Pisa tourist board - they have to spend tons of money on engineering fixes to keep this thing standing up (but not too straight) in order to keep the tourists coming.  It's also amazing how old the tower is; it was started in 1173, and took over 170 years to finish.

Around the tower there are several other interesting buildings, including the baptistry: a big dome which has a beautiful external roof and a very simple, but peaceful, interior. Once an hour, a singer comes in and sings a three-part harmony with him/herself just using the echo. We happened to be inside when the singer came along; it was pretty awesome! 

The other main attraction of the Piazza dei Miracoli is the cathedral, which is situated between the baptistry and the tower. Here's a view of the cathedral from a window upstairs in the dome of the baptistry: 

We didn't actually go up inside the tower, because it was a three-hour wait for the next available entrance. Plus, what's the point of getting a nice view of Pisa without seeing the tower (because you're inside it)? We did, however, make time for some classic "hold up the tower" and "lean with the tower" photos. We had to do it! 

We were cracking up about all the other tourists taking similar photos on this lawn. So many hands in the air holding it up! 

After a great lunch in Pisa (Osteria del Porton Rosso, if you're headed that way), we hopped back on the train to Lucca. Before meeting our hosts Jim and Deb for dinner, we had some time to see the city. One of the cool things about Lucca is the fully intact city wall, dating from the Renaissance. Here's one of the gates that leads into the city: 

Lucca is a pretty cute little city, and we had a good time wondering through the narrow streets. Here's one of the famous sights in town, the tower with trees growing on top (left). The photo on the right is the cathedral, also a really cool stop, with some of the black and white marble stripes like the ones the cathedral in Sienna is known for: 

WP and I both really liked the facade of this church in one of the main squares:  

Jim and Deb are friends of Will's parents from their time living in the UK, and have been living in Tuscany for a few years now. They have an adorable villa up in the hills above Lucca, and were kind enough to host us for a few days. After traveling for a few weeks, it was nice to be in a real home environment with such good company.  Here's the view from their yard, looking out over Tuscany: 

Their backyard is beautiful, especially with all the lavender in bloom and a very inviting swimming pool. While we were in Lucca it was pretty hot (getting up to at least 90 degrees every day), so we definitely got some good use out of the pool! We used our time with Jim and Deb to relax and recuperate before setting off on another batch of sight-seeing in Florence. It was perfect! 

On our last night with Jim and Deb, we embarked on a pasta-making adventure.  Jim, who is a great Italian chef (we already had the pleasure of tasting his lemon risotto!), set up the pasta-making table in the dining room for us:

Here's the maestro at work:

In order to get the pasta nice and smooth and to work out some of the gluten, we ran it through the lasagna noodle attachment on the KitchenAid several times. After a few times through on the "thin" setting, the noodles started to get pretty long!  

Next came the rolling! As a thank-you gift to Jim and Deb we brought them a chitarra pasta maker. Chitarra is the name for a pasta shape and the Italian word for "guitar". It is named after the instrument, because there are a set of small metal strings that are tightened across the wood frame that cut the pasta into spaghetti-like pieces.  Here's Will rolling it out:  

After rolling the pasta out (with a lot of flour coating the pasta and the rolling pin), the metal strings cut the pasta and they fall through to the wooden ramp under the strings: 

After a lot of kitchen-aid use, rolling, and flouring, we ended up with a beautiful bowl of homemade pasta!  

Jim made a pesto sauce and a meat Bolognese sauce for the pasta, and with the salad, chicken and mushrooms, we had quite a feast. Staying in Lucca was so relaxing, and I'm happy I got to meet Jim and Deb, who I've been hearing great things about for years! Thank you again for a wonderful stay in Tuscany!

Cinque Terre

A few days ago, WP and I went over to the Cinque Terre, or "Five Lands," in the Liguria region of Italy. The region is made up of – big surprise – five towns, and they are all connected by trails as well as by train and boat. We stayed in the town furthest south, Riomaggiore.

When we arrived in Riomaggiore, we were ready to start exploring right away. Italy and the hotel gods, however, had different plans for us. We had booked a room at a B&B in Riomaggiore a couple months ago, sending a series of emails back and forth.  But when we arrived, they had no record of ever talking to us, and worse, no space in their hotel! The little old couple who run the B&B shuffled around aimlessly for awhile trying to decide what to do with us. Eventually the lady walked us to a neighboring hotel (which was all booked), and the receptionist there called about eight places for us which were all completely booked. Once the little old man started suggesting we sleep on their couch and share their bathroom, we decided to leave them and figure it out on our own. Luckily, we only had to ask a few places before we found someone willing to rent us an apartment for the two nights we wanted at the same price as the hotel we were planning on. Glad that one worked out! The apartment we ended up in is actually in the background of the photo below, and out our windows we could see the little harbor for the town.

On our first evening, we made our way down to La via dell'Amore, or the Lover's Walk. The easy walk connects a few of the towns on a mostly flat path that curves around the coast, with beautiful sea views all along the way:

 The color of the water was beautiful! It was so clear and bright in some spots:

After about 20 minutes walking, we made it to the second Cinque Terre town, Manarola:

While we were sitting on a bench enjoying the scenery, this Hawaiian traveling musician approached us and asked if he could play some "original compositions":

Of course we said yes, and he even let me take a short video.  We got to learn a little about his instrument, the ancient Japanese flute, and about his time traveling all over the world to "share his music". We thought he was pretty good (we gave him a little gelato money), but you can judge for yourself: 

Manarola was a very cute little town, but before sunset we decided to start heading back to Riomaggiore.

Along the way we stopped on the path to take some sunset photos: 

There was even one little cafe/bar on the path, so we stopped for a little sunset prosecco and bruschetta! 

La via dell'Amore is pretty adorable, mostly because they really brand it as a walk for lovers. All along certain parts of the walk there are areas to write little love notes on the walls, and people have been attaching lots of locks to fences as symbols of their commitment. Here's a little bench on the path; they also use this image as the logo for the trail. So cute! 

The next morning, we decided to take the ferry over to Porto Venere, a nearby port town just south of the Cinque Terre. Getting on and off the ferry was pretty fun; we had to walk along a shaky little ramp to make it from the rocks to the deck! 

As the boat pulled into Porto Venere, we got this awesome view of the church, perched on the edge of this rock outcropping. After getting safely to land, we walked up to check out this church. It is pretty cool close up and neat to see the black and white marble stripes. There was actually a wedding in progress while we were there; what a place to get married!

In the city center of Porto Venere, one of the first stops we made was to this famous pesto shop called Bajeico, La Bottega del Pesto ("bajeico" is the word for basil in Ligurian dialect, instead of standard Italian "basilico"). They were giving out free samples, and it was so good! Will had read an article in the New York Times about this shop, and it is well worth all the hype. They pretty much only sell pesto and a few types of foccacia.

Here's WP by the fridge full of pesto. We left with two jars: one to share with my family when we meet them in Florence and one to eat for lunch that day! 

Since it is generally frowned upon to just eat pesto for lunch, we also bought three types of foccacia (roasted tomato, onion, and olive), some cheese, and some bresaola (Italian air-dried salted beef) for Will. We climbed a bunch of flights of stairs from the city center to get up to the city walls and castle at the top of Porto Venere, and found this shady little picnic spot with a view:

After a few hours in Porto Venere, we decided to take the boat back to one of the towns of the Cinque Terre, Monterosso al Mare. As we pulled out of the harbor in Porto Venere, we got this nice view of the town, with all these narrow colorful buildings side by side along the waterfront: 

On our way out into the sea we passed the church once again. We thought it was so cool that it looks like the church is almost growing out of the rock. You can even see some naturally occurring white and black stripes in the stone: 

Since we were getting off the boat at the last stop, Monterosso, we got some sea views of all the other Cinque Terre towns. Here's our home base again, Riomaggiore: 

This one is Manarola, the one we walked to on our first evening: 

The third town is called Corniglia, and since it is mostly up on top of a hill instead of nestled in a valley, the ferry doesn't usually stop there:

This one is Vernazza, which is one of the more popular towns:

The last town is Monterosso al Mare, and is one of the larger towns and also has the nicest beaches.

People swim in all the towns, but most of them don't have real beaches. We saw a lot of people happy to sunbathe on large boulders. The weather while we were there was great, if a little on the hot side. When it gets that warm I think everyone is just excited to swim, no matter the conditions of the beach.

This definitely seemed to be the case in Monterosso. Once we arrived (the ferry ride from Porto Venere all the way to Monterosso took a little over an hour), we headed for the beach ourselves.  The water was pretty warm, and while I've been to nicer sand beaches (the one we visited was pretty rocky), we still had a good time. Here's the beach in Monterosso:

That evening we made our way back to Riomaggiore by train and had a nice meal out. The whole town was absorbed in the Italy-England soccer match, and from our apartment room we could hear the screams and cheers of happy Italians (and tourists) so we knew that they had won! 

Cinque Terre seemed to be very popular with our fellow Americans, especially college-age groups backpacking through Europe. I think Cinque Terre feels even more touristy than a place like Rome because the towns are so small, we're all forced to hang out in one tiny area. In Riomagiorre, for example, there is really only one street with restaurants and bars, and all the tourists gather there. This has its positive sides too though. When we were at our first B&B we met a young American couple who sympathized with us about the hotel not working out. Later that day we ran into them in a restaurant and got to talking. We learned that they were on their honeymoon, live in NYC, and are pretty cool people.  The scenery is also incredible, so I see why we all flock to see the Cinque Terre!

We left the next morning to make our way back to Lucca (via Pisa!). Before we left, I spotted this cat taking a little nap in a sunny boat. I've been writing this post from our family friends' place in Lucca, and have been acting a lot like this cat. Soaking up the sun and relaxing by the pool before we meet my mom, stepdad, and twin younger siblings in Florence on Wednesday for some more sightseeing together. More coming soon about our time in Lucca and Pisa!   

Abruzzo-mania

After a couple days in Penne, Ben's family friend Emilia set up a tour for us to see more of the Abruzzo region. John, an English expat living with his wife in a little valley near Penne, runs tours of the area and the nearby Gran Sasso National Park. If you find yourself in Abruzzo, definitely give John a call. Here's the website for his Bed & Breakfast and tour company, Undici Abruzzo. There are some beautiful old towns in the area that predate the national park (by hundreds of years), but other than those places, the park is protected from development, which makes for some beautiful scenery. 

During the driving tour, we had a huge elevation gain that resulted in some amazing views, even just along the roadside: 

Here's one of the first towns we stopped in, Farindola:

Here's another view of the valley, as we got up even higher. In this area they grow wine, olives, and sunflowers (for the oil); you can see all the fields below:

About an hour or so after leaving Penne, we got up to a plateau and the area they call "Little Tibet", since it looks very stark and mountainous, with very few trees.

As we were driving up to this break in the fences, we saw a shepherd moving his sheep across the road:

And later on we saw some cattle (with baby calves!): 

This national park is home to the highest peaks in continental Italy south of the Alps. This peak called Corno Grande is the highest in the whole Appenines mountain range at 9,554 feet! 

Up at the base of the peak there are a few places of interest. The first is a pretty cool looking little observatory: 

There is also this hotel, where Mussolini was imprisoned at the end of WWII. In an effort to hide Mussolini from the Germans, he was moved to Campo Imperatore, because it is such an isolated area that would be difficult for his German allies to reach for a rescue attempt. 

The hotel has kept his room just as it was when he stayed there, and they have a small exhibit with some photos of his arrival and quite dramatic departure in an airplane.  Here's the office area of his room: 

Here are some weird pictures on the wall in his room of soldiers forming the letters "H" for Hitler and "M" for Mussolini: 

Nazi soldiers came to help Mussolini escape and had to hold the tail of the glider plane while they revved the engine before letting the plane drop off this ledge. Apparently the plane did a free fall for a minute before it was able to straighten out and take Mussolini to safety in Nazi-controlled Vienna (see here for more on the raid). There is also a cable car that runs during winter; here's the view looking down the mountain with the cables of the car in the foreground: 

The scenery up on top of the Campo Imperatore was incredible, and so different from the area closer to Penne just over an hour away: 

After having a quick coffee break at the hotel, we drove further into the park to visit some really old towns. We're talking REALLY old. Some of these places have city walls, gates, little doors and buildings that are from Roman times but have been continuously rebuilt and maintained. 

I liked this house, with just the door left and nature taking back over inside the rest of the house:

This area has had some earthquakes recently; unfortunately, some of these old towers and city walls fell, and are now being supported by scaffolding structures: 

I think people really were smaller back then, check out this door!

After stopping in the town Rocca di Calascio for lunch (Will had mushroom chitarrina pasta and wild boar and I had a local lentil soup and tasty gnocchi with radicchio and chickpea sauce), we did a short hike up to the top of the town to see the castle. Here's the view of the valley from the castle:

And here's the castle! 

We were having a good time pretending to be archers: 

Here's the view looking back at the highest peak in Gran Sasso: 

Just down the hill from the castle there is a neat little chapel, both were in such incredible shape for being so old. 

On our way back home to Penne we stopped in another town with a scenic historic center. A lot of these little towns are somewhat abandoned, but there are definitely a good number of families who still live in these remote places.

The tour was so fun, and we were glad we got to see a little more of the Abruzzo region!

Next post coming soon, about our time in Cinque Terre!