It is a wonderful feeling when you want to cancel the day’s plans, and your travel companions were all thinking the same thing! So a unanimous decision was made to have a lazy day, a delicious nap and ready ourselves for our booked concert at 7:00 pm in an old chapel in Vernazza.
Don and I eventually wandered down to our village of Riomaggiore for a few last shots, a pizza, and some quality people watching time.
When we arrived back at our little apartment to find Lorenza waiting for us, with a bottle of Prosecco and some delicious aperitivos. We immediately cancelled dinner plans in favour of a sumptuous feast of savoury treats and bubbly.
Then it was time to get the train to Vernazza for our concert. There was a little confusion as to exactly where the concert was to be held. We knew it was behind the church, but that was a bit of a maze in itself. I saw a guy come out of a private gate and asked, in my best Italian, I said, “una demanda, dove sanctuario s.s. Trinita?” (a question, where is the” etc. And he replied, “I don’t know, that’s what I am looking for too!”. So we added one more to our parade.
We headed up to where we thought it should be, but that building was closed up tight and didn’t look promising. There were three young people standing nearby, so we asked them and they said that they were looking for the concert too. Maps were consulted. So we added three more to our parade.
Finally, a young man and woman climbed the stairs to where we were standing, the young man holding a big set of keys. Aha! “Concerto?” – “Si!”
He was the pianist and she was the vocalist and they were ready to perform.
Such a beautiful location and amazing acoustics. Even Don enjoyed his hour of opera.
We headed back to our place to pack up and get ready to leave early the next morning.
All went according to plan, and we even made our 5 minute train connection enroute to Florence. This lady had a small dog in her designer purse:
We got to the car rental place without incident, except that the clerk insisted that our reserved rental was for 4:00 and it was only 1:00, so we would have to wait 3 hours. The only alternative was to take a larger car and pay more for the daily rate, but I overruled Don on waiting and okayed the big car and a few extra bucks on the final tab.
Only one more toll booth between us and paradise:
We arrived at Casale le Masse and found our little apartment – it is a jewel!
We were all starving, having not had an opportunity for lunch, so we dropped our bags and headed down to the Greve town square for a bite to eat. So for your viewing pleasure, here is a little more Italian food porn – it was so good!
A quick stop at the wine store and we braved the elements to walk back up the hill to our little apartmento, where our super-considerate hostess had stocked our fridge with dessert for our travel day.
Home Sweet Home for the next six nights.
Jan and Don Travel the World 