Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 9
Back on the Road Again
We finally ended up getting out of the villa on Wednesday after lazing around for most of the morning and early afternoon. By about 2:00 we decided to make a short drive around the neighbouring towns around our villa.
We followed the signs and made it to Sambuca but it turned out that the liqueur was not made there – or at least we could find no signs of it.
From Sambuca we had decided that we wanted to find a local Chianti winery and do some wine tasting (and maybe some buying).
About 15 minutes down the road we came across a winery called Melini so we pulled into their parking lot.
We sampled about 3 or 4 types of wines and we both ended up buying a few bottles – packed in the requisite cardboard carrying cases to come back home with us to Vancouver.
The growing load of wine bottles in our possession was becoming a constant topic of conversation as obviously we would have to carry these bottles home and each add a noticeable weight to our already hefty luggage loads. We had both brought along an extra sports bag to be used to carry additional purchases. We’ve all concluded that they would almost certainly need to be brought out and started to be filled before leaving our villa on Saturday.
As the farm that our villa is situated on: Quercia al Poggio, has a mix of grapes and olives as the product that it harvests. As such, they have their own olive oil that they sell.
As I cook a lot with olive oil, getting some freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil to take home intrigued us and we inquired about it with the owners. After speaking to them about it, we placed our order so Peter and Liz will be purchasing a 500 ml bottle and so will we. In addition, we will also be purchasing a 5 litre can. Talk about heavy loads!
The Leaning Tower of Pizza
On Thursday morning, we were preparing to go out on the long drive out to the west coast of Italy to a place called Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre (meaning five lands), is a protected national park area that has a stunning walking path along the Mediterranean. The path goes between 5 small towns – all situated on the side of the mountains by the sea.
It was going to be about a 2 hour drive to Cinque Terre and we decided that we would make a detour on the way to Pisa to see the famous leaning tower.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is of course the well known structure which most people have likely heard about. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who, as a child, referred to it as the Leaning Tower of Pizza. 🙂
Like many old European towns, Pisa is a challenge in which to find parking and even more difficult to find the route to the highway when you’re leaving.
We parked on the south side of town near the Arno River and walked our way past the University and onto the Piazza del Duomo where the Tower is located.
While only moderately crowded when we were there, I can only imagine that it would be standing room only if one was to go there during the summer time.
We had heard that in the past few years much work had been done on the Tower to try and correct some of it’s lean as it was in danger of eventually falling over over time. Since the tower was built in the 12th century (on soft ground, no doubt), the tower has continued to lean more and more over the years. It was felt that unless repairs were done to it that the tower would eventually collapse.
They said that the foundation was dug up and rebuilt and apparently it is supposed to be much more secure now and once again people are allowed to climb to the top (for a nominal fee, of course).
It occurred to us that a country like Italy must have to spend a fortune on the continual repairs to its ancient buildings and monuments lest they completely fall apart.
The detour to see the Tower was worth it but we were back on the road again within the hour.
We continued down the highway and made it to our destination of the town of Le Spezia. From Le Spezia we will catch the train and make it to the first of the five Cinque Terre towns of Riomaggiore.
The distances between the five towns vary as well do the difficulty of the hike. We ended up walking the first two legs of the Cinque Terre from Riomaggiore to Manarola then onto Corniglia. We then ended up skipping Vernazza and took the train to the last town of Monterroso al Mare.
The views between all of the towns are different but all are variations of spectacular Mediterranean vistas and/or cliffside towns.
Out of all of the places we had visited so far in Italy, the walk along Cinque Terre was to Barb and I a refreshing changing as it was a natural experience first and foremost.
While Barb and I enjoyed the walks along the paths and probably would have continued further after the second town, it was obvious that Peter and Liz had reached (or passed) their enjoyment threshold and didn’t see any option about going any further by foot. As a result we all agreed to take the train to the last town before returning to La Spezia by train.
By the time we arrived back in La Spezia we were all pretty tired and enjoyed a nice meal at a local restaurant by the train station.
We had originally talked about Peter driving back to the villa from La Spezia but in the end we decided that since it was dark by then and that Peter hadn’t yet driven in Italy, that I would do the return drive again. Driving the Autostradas at night is somewhat tricky as none of the roads are lit at night and speeds are typically higher (sometimes much higher) than what we are used to driving at home. Not necessarily the best time to be driving in Italy the first time.
Driving in Italy – Part 2
Having spent over 6 hours driving yesterday in addition to the rest of the driving this week, I wanted to add some additional perspectives on the driving situation here in Italy.
Before commenting, I should say that over the years I have had an opportunity to drive in Europe in Germany, France, Spain and now Italy so I base these observations on these countries alone. I drove for only 2 days totalling a few hours in Scotland so I can’t make any real judgements about their drivers.
In Canada, there is often comments made about how bad we drive and “how much more disciplined drivers are in Europe”. My response to this is that this statement ranges from completely true to absolute nonsense – depending which country you are talking about.
To make a large characterization, I would say that when people are talking out the “disciplined European drivers”, they are talking about Germans. Maybe the French. They are probably not talking about about Italian drivers.
I am always careful to appreciate that there are different ways of driving in every country and what may seem like undisciplined to one person may not be to the locals. Nonetheless, driving on the highways should be less individual to each country – especially in Europe where there are more cross EU standards.
What I have seen so far is that Italian drivers like to drive fast (especially on narrow, winding roads – which there are a lot of in this part of the country) but don’t show a specific discipline like using turn signals. I would say that I have probably seen less than 5% of cars on the highways use their turn signals when changing lanes or passing. I’m certain that if you were to drive this way in Germany, prison time would be certain.
Perhaps out of necessity, parking in the large Italian cities seems to have a certain lawlessness (or perhaps creativeness, depending on how you look at it) to it as every square inch of the roadsides – including the corners – are used for parking. The space left between parked cars is usually measured in millimetres.
I can see why small cars like the Smart car are so popular here as most city streets are very narrow and often available parking spaces are equally small.
On the subject of cars still, I was going to comment on our rented car which is a Ford Focus wagon. I normally wouldn’t have much to say about a car like this but it is in fact the first diesel car I have driven before. While only having a relatively small 1.6 litre engine, it has very good pulling power (a hallmark of diesel engines) especially with all four of us in the car. I have driven the car on the Autostrada at 140 Km/hr for hours at a time and it has been quite comfortable and powerful enough – even when passing. Of course it would be nice to have my M Roadster to drive in Europe but that’s not likely to ever happen and I probably would never be able to fit anything more than an overnight bag in the trunk. I just can’t help thinking about it as we were passed yesterday at 200+ Km/hr by other BMWs and Alfa Romeos.
We got in quite late on the drive home from Cinque Terre – arriving back at the villa after midnight. As a result of everyone being exhausted from the previous day’s travel, we are making Friday (today) another lounging around day.
We just came back from having lunch at the bar in nearby San Donato – the only place open for lunch in the small town. We had some nice prosciutto and fromaggio (cheese) sandwiches which the owner made by carving the cured ham from a large leg of ham. Part bar, part deli, part grocery store, the bar seemed to be the local hangout for people like us to get a sandwich or for some locals to come watch the football game.
Tomorrow (Saturday), we will be leaving Quercia al Poggio here in Tuscany and we will be proceeding to the last leg of our Italian Adventure: Milan. We will be driving the car to Florence where we will return it back to Avis and then catch the train north to Milan.
It’s hard to believe that in just 5 days, we will all be home again.
On to Milano
As it’s Saturday today, it marks the day of our departure from our Tuscan villa and our journey north for the last stage of our Adventure in Milano (Milan).
With every move from one place to another, there is the required packing up of all of our belongings and every stage of our trip makes this process longer and longer. This is mostly as a result of our ongoing accumulation of beads and trinkets – or at least the local equivalent. In our case, bottles of Chianti wine and in my day pack: 5.5 litres of organic extra virgin olive oil from the Quercia al Poggio farm where we stayed.
Without exception, all four of us are weighed down with heavy items and in both cases, the extra sports bag that we brought is now in full use. I was under the illusion that this would not occur until we spent some time in Milan but the reality is that all of the heavy stuff will be bought in Tuscany. Compared to bottles of wine or olive oil, clothes are relatively light.
On our drive into Florence this morning, we were all remarking on how lucky we were to have such good weather in Tuscany – sunny and relatively warm pretty much all the time.
One of our biggest concerns on our drive in was the ability to easily find the AVIS car rental office in Florence. On the map it was a simple matter to locate it but we had long learned that this had to bearing in the reality of driving anywhere. To the unfamiliar, most large European cities are a maze of one way streets and impossible to find street names. Planning lots of extra time to get anywhere by car in cities is an absolute must.
We definitely did plan for extra time this morning but were also lucky to to find the AVIS office without too much problems. Add to this a quick taxi ride to the statzione and we ended up about two hours to wait before our train was to depart. To address this, we were able to change our tickets to an earlier train.
Sidebar: I can’t speak highly enough about public transportation system in Italy and Europe in general. In most places here, we have been able to book our train tickets at a vending machine, pay with our credit card and walk away with our tickets in hand within minutes. This morning we were able to even change our train through the self serve machine which all have instructions in about 5 or 6 languages.
While we were waiting for our train to arrive in the Florence station, a colleague of Liz and Peter from their office happens to see them standing there. Sam Pierri and his wife Pat were similarly travelling in Italy and by fluke chance happened to meet up in the train station. Peter said that people in their office were joking before they all left that “you guys will probably run into each other in Italy”. How unlikely was that?
Our next update from Milan …
Baden
