There is nothing like a day at the beach, surrounded by beautiful women – young and old – to make one feel the teensiest bit insecure about this old post covid body. (Sorry guys – no photos today – left the cell phone at home for security purposes.).
But surprisingly, I don’t think the Italians see women’s bodies exactly the same way. There are mammas and nonnas in all their glory – enjoying the sun and the sea in their two pieces no less, seemingly without a care in the world for who (much less that they) might think they look “fat”! I love this and I am trying to embrace it for myself. Maybe in another glass of Vermentino (and maybe a little limoncello) I might actually achieve this particular form of nirvana.
Other thoughts today include that there are more mosquitoes here than at home – my bites are turning ugly – but that may be because the food here is better. That is my funny for the day.
We are waiting for Lorenza and her husband, Franco, to join us for happy hour. She sat and chatted with us this morning and we had a great conversation with much word searching and smiling (I have google translate at the ready for later), and she confessed that she watches Love it or List it Vancouver!! (“Take it or give it”). Reality t.v. – bringing us all together.
Tomorrow we head back to Florence for two nights before picking up a car and heading deep into Chianti country. There we will also be revisiting a bunch of places (aka restaurants) that we have loved before, but after that we are heading into territory unknown called Apulia – the heel of the boot. It is a compact area and won’t require a tremendous amount of driving, but oh the sights we’ll see. So stay tuned for that. Less food porn (maybe) and many things I guarantee that some of you have never seen before. So exciting!
They say “you can’t go back”, but I think sometimes you can. Sometimes there are just things that pull you back – and you won’t be satisfied until you have seen or done whatever that is.
Now, many of you dear readers will already know that this is not our first trip to the Cinque Terre, nor even our second. For Don, the pull is sitting in Lorenza’s garden, watching the sun set and maybe even falling asleep to the distant sounds of the village winding down for the night. For me, it has been to see the villages by boat, and this guy:
Il Gigante, Monterosso
The one and only time we were in Monterosso before, the kids and we had done the gruelling 2.5 hour hike from Vernazza to get here and while we were sitting in a park preparing our picnic lunch, Don managed to slice his finger open and then declared the day over as he herded us to the train station to go back to our place in Vernazza. This was 2007. Needless to say, we didn’t see much of Monterosso, and when I got back to Vancouver and saw a photo of this guy and realized that we were “this” close, I just had to come back and find him. As you can see . . . he waited for me.
The ferry that services the five villages was another experience I had yet to enjoy, so today was the day. As we headed down to the landing in the harbour, a young man standing by a boat called to us, “Do you want a private boat? Or would you rather be stuffed like sardines in a can on the public boat!?!” Tempting, but we have our reasons. It’s a hop on hop off ferry, so you can make as many or as few stops as you want between the villages. Otherwise, a private boat with a handsome Italian skipper does sound very nice indeed.
Seeing the villages from the waterside is a wonderful experience, they are each unique and tiny and it is fascinating to think that the people here have lived in this remote area for so long – and until quite recently – completely untouched by tourism. Yes, yes – the tourists are here, but with good reason, so don’t let that deter you.
Another good thing about returning to a favourite place is that you don’t have to “do” a bunch of obligatory things. You probably did all those the first time. This time, you can just take time to enjoy what you love about the place.
The villages and Monterosso beach aka “Bacon Beach” according to Don
The sun here is unrelenting, so by the time we got back to our home base of Riomaggiore, we were so hot. I am really feeling the heat this trip. So we headed to the swimming beach. Don wanted to go back to our apartment and change into his swimming trunks and get my bathing suit, the water shoes, and a towel, so he did that (all uphill remember) while I staked out a spot on the beach. I was so hot (there was no shade) and the water was so inviting, that I stripped down to my skivies (which could pass for a black tankini or one piece if you don’t look to close and I figure no one is looking at me when there are all these beautiful Italian girls around) and plunged myself into the beautiful ocean water. It was sublime. So when Don returned with my coloured t-shirt instead of bathing suit top and no water shoes, it didn’t matter a whit. It was glorious. And not a camera in sight (thank goodness).
I love seeing the local people just having a rest, chatting with their friends, and watching the crazy tourists go by. Or finding a moment to catch up on the news.
We did go inside two small churches in Monterosso, and especially liked the skeleton character – welcome my friends!!
By the way, you can click on each of the gallery images in any of the posts to see the full photo – Mary’s head is getting a little cut off here and I don’t seem to be able to fix it.
So that ‘s about it for today’s adventures, tomorrow is our last day here already, and is going to be a chillax day. Though Lorenza dropped by to say she wanted to have a little happy hour for us tomorrow evening, and did we like Aperol Spritz’s? Do we!?! Yes, yes we do.
Today’s lunch plans started at about 10:00, but lunch didn’t actually happen until after 1:00. But I should probably start this story at the beginning . . . In 2019.
Manarola
That was when we discovered the cliff side restaurant called Nessun Dorma, in Manarola, after a long hike down from the mountain village of Corniglia. We were travelling with David and Ayami at the time and arrived at the oceanside village of Manarola, hot and sticky and ready to eat. From above we could see the umbrellas of this restaurant and immediately decided that we were going there. So we sent Don ahead to get us a table because it looked busy. This was a good move because he got the last available cliff side table and we had the most amazing lunch of various kinds of bruschetta, meats and cheeses, etc. So it will come as no surprise that one of our first priorities upon arrival was to make a reservation there for our stay this time, because it is a very busy place.
Of course, the world has changed since we were last here, and now you can’t make a reservation exactly, you now have to have “the app”. You still can’t book on the app though, what you have to do instead is open the app and wait until exactly 12:30, then press the button to get a place in line! I was fast, but 19 people were faster.
Complicating matters was an in house pesto making course, which (good for them) filled all the tables with eager pesto makers who had to leave before there were tables for eager lunch goers.
Somehow, we got there at 11:30. So we took a shaded picnic table in the little part above the restaurant and got to hear much of the pesto making instructions and see how much work goes into making pesto with a mortar and pestle. A. Lot. Once they had their little 2 tbsps of pesto, they also got a charcuterie board and some local wine to go with. All this, and an apron, for 60 euro each. But we could smell the garlic from above.
Pesto making class
So at 12:30 (exactly), the rest of us malingerers headed down to the entryway to jostle for positions. Don ended up by some Californians, and regaled them with one good story or another while I went a little further down the line.
The young couple next to me were from France, so I asked what their number was, to gauge if we were kind of in the right position. They were 18 and we were 20, so that was good. A couple of guys tried to budge past us and someone asked his number – “54” he said. One of the Italians told him to head to the back!
This guy was just ahead of me on the stairs – I guess no one told him about the pickpockets that ply their trade all around here.
It is a very tightly run ship and we got in pretty quickly once the pesto makers finally left. We were shown to a table not on the water side, but I noticed that a guy on his phone at the waterfront table across from us had a pesto maker’s apron on, so I went over and asked if he was leaving. He said, “Yes, in about 5 minutes, I am waiting for my wife to come back (from the can, which is actually in the park above)”. Yay – that’s great, but what would be even better would be if he would trade seats with us while he waited, so we could snag the good seats, and he very good-naturedly agreed to that. Don is never quite sure whether to be embarrassed or proud when I do things like this, but he was pretty happy today.
So worth all the aggravation and waiting and standing in line . . .
Manarola is very small and quaint – the mammas were chatting and the young bucks were cliff jumping into the sparkling sea.
By the time we had waited in the sun for our train and climbed the steep hill back to our little villa, I think I had a bit of heat exhaustion. Did the cold shower thing and had a 2 hour nap, then moved to the couch for another nap. Somehow, about 7:30, I magically recovered just in time for a wee glass of limoncello. As you do. Tomorrow we swim!
Wouldn’t it be nice if every day started like this, with a handwritten note and a tasty breakfast?
Morning note from Lorenza, slid under our door: Good Morning!!! I wish you a beautiful day. If you open the door there are focaccia croissants for you.
And guess what – we have had a beautiful day. It was all about lunch. And dinner. And planning lunch and dinner for the next three days. Whatever shall we do on Tuesday, when the shops are closed!?!
Messily crunching on our marmalade croissants – and we won’t squeal on the Italians for this wonderful addition which, according to the French, would be a non-non – we decided to have lunch here in Riomaggiore today at a cliff-side place we had noticed on our last trip, but not tried out. Intent on getting a cliff-side table, we trucked up there for what looked like an 11:00 opening time. All the way, Don is thinking, “didn’t I just have breakfast?”, but I had him on board with the only way to make sure we had a great table was to get there early. And my reassurance that it was okay to start drinking wine at 11:00. Oh, ok then. So we got there no problem, except that it really wasn’t open at 11. Maybe 12. So we went for a walk – as you do – and found ourselves back there at 11:30, with the doors wide open and the cliff-side seats all available (we were the first ones there).
A Bar e Vini something something, Riomaggiore
I told the waiter that now that we were sitting at a table, they would be full soon, but he shrugged and said, “it might rain”. We had felt a few drops earlier, but it actually felt refreshing in the heat. Not “real” rain for us. Which reminds me, a traveller should not tell a local that they hope it doesn’t rain. Much of Europe, and especially Italy, hasn’t had any rain to speak of for three months, so they would love a good downpour. The weather app on my phone has been catastrophizing thunder, lightning and sometimes rain for our entire stay. This morning as I recognized the sound of raindrops outside from my cozy bed, it occurred to me that the Currie Curse was indeed in play and it was going to rain like it has never rained before while we are here. But no, it was just a little teaser, and the wind quickly blew that system out to sea. We are happy for the clouds and wind – it helps with what would otherwise be brutally hot weather.
The tiny harbour of Riomaggiore is always bustling and cute. I remember we tried to get into one of the restaurants for a late lunch the last time we were here. I think it was about 1:30 and there were people eating and empty tables, so we sat down at one of them. Eventually we were approached by a waiter who said, “We’re closed”. Which leads me to another Italy travel rule I have remembered – don’t try to get a late lunch or an early dinner at a restaurant. They close up tight. Luckily, the Italians consider pizza to be a “snack”, so in a pinch, you can usually find a takeaway pizza (which may just be the tastiest thing you ever remember eating).
Kepris Pizzeria
Which reminds me – we had the best pizza at this little hole in the wall (literally) last night. Recommended by our Lorenza as her favourite pizza, with a side story about how she was in Milan for five months to help her daughter with her newborn and they didn’t know how to make pizza there. We ate there, but most people where taking their box(es) of pizza down to the rocks at the harbour to eat pizza and watch the sunset.
Right now we are just finishing off the meat and cheese platter that Don shopped for in the local grocery store earlier this afternoon, and as I sit here listening to a street game of soccer somewhere down in the village and seeing the odd bolt of lightening on the horizon, I am thinking how grateful I am to be back travelling and here in particular, with a handsome husband who wants to take me out for an ice cream.
So off we go – stay tuned for tales of our lunch tomorrow at Nessun Dorma in Manarola.
For all the things we have learned in the last three years, it has become painfully obvious that there are also skills and knowledge that have been lost and forgotten. And as with many things, it isn’t until you go to use those skills once more that you make mistakes and realize that you may have forgotten some of the most fundamental elements of “travelling”.
Right off the bat (and somewhat reminiscent of the day/night/day – as it turned out – of my second son’s birth), we should have been on notice that something was about to go very much awry when everything seemed to be going oh so smoothly.
Here comes lesson number one. For the first time in my fifty years of travelling life, I did not check to ensure that my name on the plane ticket was correct. In my defence, I was busy checking to make sure that Don’s was right and didn’t think to correct the Air France’s auto fill-in feature for my own information. So when the agent said, “I’m very sorry, but the name on your ticket has to be the same as the name on your passport”, I thought, “yeah, I know that”. (But I didn’t actually say that out loud, which will be a relief to some of you out there.) She held it up for me to see and, I’ll be darned if it didn’t say “Jan Currie”. Our hearts sank and I was wondering what my chances of getting someone at Air France on the phone were, when she said that it actually could be fixed, and I had two options: they would actually allow me to fly that day on the first leg, but with the knowledge that I would have the same problem in another language when trying to check in for our return flight; OR if we didn’t mind waiting, an agent who knew how to make the name change could help us when she was free and it would be correct for our return flight in October. Since we were so early (3 hours and no lineups except the one developing behind us), and we had plenty of time to wait AND had absolutely no desire to have this problem again (in French no less), we sung a resounding “YES” in chorus and stood aside to wait however long it took. In the end, an agent was able to change those two flights, but not the flight from Paris to Florence. But “don’t worry – it is like a domestic flight and they probably won’t check”. “Well, at least we will be in Europe by then”, said Don and off we went to our gate, and all was well, including having time for lunch in the departures lounge because out of the four of us who voted, only one thought that they would serve us lunch (that’s you Jeanette!). But that’s okay – we had lunch twice that day.
The much anticipated shit-show of arrivals and passport check in Charles de Gaulle airport, turned out to be fake news – 20 minutes from outside security to our gate. I had a little sleep on a wooden bench, to which Don commented, “If you can sleep here, you can sleep anywhere” – which is actually true if you are tired enough.
And the ticket agent was right – no one in CDG cared about my little heretofore catastrophic name problem.
Florence airport is tiny – we had to do a “hard brake” because the runway is so short. That was fun. Our seats were not together, and I ended up being squished between an interestingly shaggy old fellow moving from Brazil to Italy and a young guy who said he does lighting technology for a band, and who was heading to Italy for a total of 3 days to attend a wedding with other band members scattered throughout the plane. The Brasílian guy insisted that the young guy was famous, but I thought he was kidding. Now I am thinking maybe I should have asked, but didn’t want to be “that guy”. Anyway, we had a great chat.
So we get to our hotel, and before I tell you “the rest of the story”, I am going to post a photo of the hotel’s best quality, the rooftop bar and pool.
The Student Hotel, Florence
Now, there is a little hint at the downside of this hotel in the name, and as we entered the lobby, there was one (long) line-up for students, and one for the rest of us (just us). Our room was spartan (to say the least) and Don – believe it or not – was at a bit of a loss for words when he saw it, because I did all the bookings this time and he did not know where we were going other than the two stops he requested we stay at places we had been before.
But we were only here for one night and the idea was to be close to the train station for our morning train, so okay, let’s see this pool. And yay! The pool is amazing. With a bar. Once we had our beer and Aperol spritz in hand, we hatched a plan to go for a swim and then dinner, trying to stay awake until 8:00 before crashing. The place seems to be some sort of quasi-school, though I can’t believe these 18 to 23 year old kids are paying 150$ a night to stay here. And I am happy to say that there was one other couple that were older than us. The people-watching was pretty fun for an hour or so. Especially the part where everyone in the seats with the primo view was on their phone.
Don thought the girl watching was pretty good – I didn’t get many photos of that tho
We went to find the nearest pizzeria and took the longest way of course, in the wrong shoes, so consequently I limped back to the hotel (the shorter way) and am nursing sore feet (but not yet blisters thankfully). Second lesson is that you are always walking a long way, even if it’s only for dinner, so forget the nice sandals. Everyone here is wearing runners anyway.
So as we drop gratefully into bed (at 8:30), the music is blaring from the courtyard and the kids are at least two hours from banging down the halls and bidding all their new friends adieu. Lucky we were exhausted and the music wasn’t that bad, so at least one of us fell asleep pretty much right away. Of course that same person had to get up at about 2:30 am to use the washroom, and that was when what looked like a piece of fluff started walking around on the bathroom floor. I am guessing silverfish. Yay.
Wide awake before 6:00 am, we both had showers and hopefully woke a bunch of hungover kids up. This is one of the sweet revenges of the senior that we have just discovered . . .
We got the train no problemo and enjoyed the views on the way. Don loves a good train ride. We changed in La Spezia and when we got on the connector train, quickly became the information booth for everyone asking if this was the train to the Cinque Terre or some version thereof. Even though we were the new experts, we almost got caught up in getting off at the first “La Spezia” stop, being completely off the train before asking a fellow passenger (newest new expert), who said no – it’s the next one that you want. Don grabbed both suitcases and virtually threw them back on the train as I hopped on – if it had started then, only one of us would have made it to the correct La Spezia stop. But we both did (I was considering risking an arm in the door if it started to close, but luckily didn’t have to make that choice). Oh – I forgot the third lesson – never expect “il toilette” to have any paper of any sort. Always have a cache of Kleenexes with you. This may be the most important lesson of all. I was ok thankfully, but used the last tiny square of tp and had to warn the next lady that there was no more. She returned to her seat to stock up on tissues. Fourth lesson is always have a euro coin in your pocket. Pay toilets are the thing here. The cafe where we had coffee and croissants (!) had a toilet but you needed a code that was printed on the receipt that they took from you when they made your coffees. I held up the line long enough for the cashier to give me another receipt with the code and there was a large male enforcer at the bathroom door who punched in the code and said (to me and the two ladies behind me) “Due!!”. Meaning 2. So the 3 of us crammed in and closed the door. I’m pretty sure neither of them had the code. Chalk another one up for the sisterhood.
We finally made our way to Riomaggiore, to stay once again in one of Don’s favourite places in the world. Casa Lorenza is run by the most wonderful woman and we had a loud, huggy reunion on the front patio when we arrived.
Casa Lorenza, Riomaggiore
The rest of the day consisted of lunch, naps, blogs, dinner and sitting on our patio to watch the sun set. Don is fast asleep beside me in a lounge chair and we have (almost) made it to a normal bedtime for the second day in a row, so the jet lag should be behind us by tomorrow.
Jan and Don Travel the World 