Cinque Terre, Italian Coast

After our road trip we stayed in La Spezia for one night before getting up nice and early to head to the Cinque Terre just a short train ride away. This is a UNESCO site and is made up of 5 villages all on the coast. We stayed at the village called Riomaggoire which is the first village of the 5. There is not really much to each village as they are really quite small but are absolutely adorable. On our first afternoon here we checked out our little village which took all of 10 minutes and then headed to the beach. Well cobble stones which we found so bizarre! And so uncomfortable to lye on after you have been swimming! The water however was beautiful. It was this dark blue colour but really clear. Bit cold at first but after you swam around a fair bit you got kind of warm! We also made some rock castles….not as much fun as sand castles and less satisfying to destroy! We finished our day by finding a lookout and settling in the watch the sunset. Absolutely beautiful.
Our second day we got up nice and early as we had already pre-planned to do the 9km walk that starts in the first town and ends in the second town. We set off at 9am in Riomaggoire walked the nice boardwalk and ended up in Manarola 20 minutes later. The next section of the walk was also fairly easy and took us probably half an hour to get to the steps that led to Corniglia but 15 minutes to get up them! Corniglia is set on top of a rather high cliff so hence the thousands of steps to get to it. We felt quite puffed after this and hungry as we hadn’t had much breakfast, so we stopped here to have a panni and coffee and ended up speaking to 2 Australian women who were on holidays for 6 weeks and were also doing the 9km walk. We had heard through the grapevine that the next 2 sections of the walk were quite hard but we had no idea it would be this hard! It seemed that we would climb one hill then much to our disappointment we would walk down which only meant that we would have to eventually go up again. This next section took us the rest of the day. We stopped in Vernazza for half hour to soak our feet in the cool water and then headed on to the last walk to Monterosso. By the time we got to the village our legs were shaking so much we had to sit down! Although the walk was quite hard, the views and scenery was well worth it. Sometimes we would be walking on the edge of the cliffs over looking the sea feeling nice and cool and then others we would be amongst vineyards dying of heat! Pretty amazing though.

When we stopped in Monterosso, we changed into our togs, jumped in the ocean and pretty much jumped straight out again! Because although we were really hot the water was quite cool as it was 3:30pm by the time we got there. We quickly changed and headed off to find some food and it was here. On our last evening in Italy that we finally came across some great pizza.

This one is for the Penna's!!

Our next stop was La Spezia where we were hiring a car to drive to a village called Rocca d’Arazzo where my Grandfather was born and lived until her moved out to Australia as a little boy. This was a mission! We got the car fairly easily but it was working out how to drive a left handed car that worried me! As it was my trip it was my job to drive, so after sitting and playing with the gears I felt like I had the hang of it. Got instructions of how to get out of the town and onto the motorway and we were off!! Now, when we planned this idea in London it seemed like a great idea…that is until we saw how people drove in Italy. Oh my god they are crazy! Lucky we were in a quieter part of Italy so it wasn’t too bad but the motorway, that was a different story. There was at least 3 lanes of traffic so a slow, an overtaking and a fast lane. The speed limit said either 110 or 130 depending on which section we drove. Now, I sat in the slow lane, not because I was going slow, but because I was actually doing the speed limit. The other 2 lanes were doing at least 20-40kms over the limit, especially those in the far left lane. It was freaking unbelievable! Even when the speed limit dropped to 80 every car was still doing at least 100. I have never seen Liz looked so scared. She barley spoke to me when we were on the motorways! But the roads were bloody unreal, as they should be since the toll was 15 euros, one way!!

Our plan was to drive to Asti and stay there the night then wake up the next morning to head to Rocca. We were basically on track with only a slight detour off the motorway as their numbers and signing was a little difficult to follow at times. We finally made it to Asti and found the first hotel we came across. Was really nice and clean and then next morning while having a pastry and coffee at their bar, we asked the owner how to get to Rocca d'Arrazzo as our map didn’t quite give us the smaller towns in that area. He kind of laughed a little when we told him where we wanted to go and just kept repeating that it was so small! But he and his side kick gave us really good directions and a map of the region and shook our hands on the way out. So nice!! We hopped back into the car and about 10 minutes later we were in Rocca d’Arrazzo.

This place is so tiny! Everything was just like you picture a small Italian village to look like, but sorry Mum, there were no cobble stones anymore. We walked around and found the Municiple Hall which also houses most of the government offices as well as the post office. The main street had 1 bakery, a little butchers, 2 bar/café places, a general store, a 1 pump petrol station and a bank. So it’s safe to say it didn’t take long to explore, but we did walk around all the streets just to check it out and to take lots of photos for you all. We did find the cemetery and had a look around but we only found 2 Penna’s and a few Doglione’s so I’m not sure if we are related to them or not. But I have the info which I’ll email to you all soon. It is such a pretty region out there and is mostly farms and vineyards. But it was so great just to visit there. A few people tried to talk to us and due to us knowing no Italian it made it difficult but I think we did ok with hand movements! I made you a short video clip so I hope you can all watch it!

After spending the morning there we headed back to Asti for lunch and a quick look around and then got back in the car to head back down to La Spezia. It was safe to say that I was not sad to give back the car as our trip back down was great until we had to navigate our way back to the hire car office…that was stressful in peak hour. I had gotten used to driving on the left side on the motorway but in the towns it was different…lucky I had Liz who helped me to turn on to the correct side of the road every time! Super Co-Driver she was!! I will send you all pictures of Rocca once I’m settled back in London as I’ll only be able to put a few up on here. Miss you all lots and lots
Xoxo

P.S I am still trying to upload the video. When it's up I'll send an email through. Sorry but the internet is being difficult!

Pisa, Italy

Not much else to say about Pisa really!

Florence, Italy

So Florence was fairly similar to Siena, just bigger. Again filled with about 10 art galleries so it was probably not the best place for us to stop. But we did make the most of it…we saw the second biggest Basilica in the world and also a bridge which is completely lined with jewellery shops making it the most expensive bridge in the world. But most of the jewellery was dead ugly so I don’t know who would pay for it! This was a good place to just wonder and walk through all the streets and look in shops. Found a super nice place to have a Panini which for once was not a rip off!! We stayed out at a campsite again in a little cabin, was bloody freezing but was good as they had cooking facilities. Hooray! We took a day trip our to a small town called Greve in Chianti just to see what the Tuscan country side looked like… was really pretty and mainly just hills completely covered in vineyards.Didn’t find my castle though girls! Haha Hmmm and I think that is it for Florence. Oh we did by some leather goods from these markets and I used my super good bargining skills to get some euros off!

Siena, Italy

Not really too much to write about here…it is a really small town which is full of churches and has a giant square in the middle. It is mostly famous for it’s art and a horse race that happens every year in the centre square. We were not there for the race and art is not our cup of tea so basically we wondered around, ate some food, looked in the shops and that was Siena done. We did however find this great place that did awesome hot chocolates…nice and thick just like they do in New Farm! We did have a really nice place to stay here with super cosy doonas so we slept in too which was just lovely.

Rome, Italy

We started our first evening in Rome by going to the supermarket and having THE best dinner we’ve had since I don’t know when…it was only tuna and salad but since it had been a while since we had eaten such fresh ingredients we were in heaven!! Our first day in the actual city took us on a Vatican City walking tour, which we were both excited about. Even though I’m not religious, I thought when in Rome….ba-doom-ching! Haha I promise I won’t use that cheesy line again! Anyways, we had an American girl who seemed pretty cool but we soon discovered she was quite annoying…reason being is that she likened everything to pop culture somehow. I’d really like to give you all examples, but due to a number of family members reading this I think it’d be best if I saved them for one on one conversations. Oh one that is not too x-rated is that she referred to St Peter’s Basilica as the Pope’s crib (Grandma’s crib slang for home/house). Yeah. She was tops. But apart from her what we saw was fantastic. She gave a rather rushed but general run down of how the Vatican City came about then took us over the Bridge of Angels, which has a statue representing each step of the Passion of the Christ. Then down into St Peter’s Basilica. It is huge!! We went into the Vatican Museum as this is how you get to see the Sistene Chapel. But first we got to see some of the art work in the museum, sculptures, the map hallway and the tapestry room. The guide briefly told us about these things before talking us through the Sistene Chapel painting. This was done outside of the chapel as you are not allowed to talk or take photos of the paintings once you are there. We finally went into the Chapel and it is truly amazing. I cannot believe that one man painted all of that in 2 years and in such a bad body position. Just looking up at the ceiling for 10mins hurt, imagine doing that for 3 years!! No wonder Michelangelo ended up a cripple. This is where our tour ended and we were on our own. We decided to head up to the top of the Basilica to look out over Rome…not as cool as the Eiffel Tower especially since we had to walk up these tiny stairs in the dome…but still not a bad sight at all. We also went down into the Basilica and it is even more impressive on the inside. There is gold leaf everywhere, sculptures galore, paintings and mosaics. At the beginning of the Dome there is lettering done in mosaics and these are apparently 6ft tall…holy smokes! But this is where we ended our day.

The next day we did a Roaming tour of the city with a much better guide. This was a general all over tour and took us to Palentine Hill, the Pantheon, Colosseum, Roman Forums and lots more, I just can‘t remember them all! But we did get a bucket load of history over the 4 hours. Rome is so cool! Our guide also gave us some other sites to go and see so over the next 2 days we set out to find them. One was a 12th Century church which had a 4th Century church under it and then under that church there was a 1st Century house and cult alter…awesome. Also saw St Peter’s Basilica through a keyhole…bit hard to explain but trust me it was cool! We also saw the Spanish Steps and the Trevie Fountain. I think that is about it for the sight seeing things.

We were really disappointed in Rome’s food as everything was over priced and shit. We got ripped off a couple times at dinner and even got yelled at by a waiter…so our opinions of Italians was not the best. By the time our 5 nights were up we were definitely ready to leave but before we did we made sure we saw the Colosseum again…this building is just by far the greatest we have seen on our trip.