Day Two Cinque Terre: Jonny's Camera

Our little patio where we dined on tasty Italian morsels (:

The protected swimming hole we discovered near the center of town in Vernazza; I'm sure this place is no secret though. The town is so small I don't think there is anywhere kids can get into trouble because there's always someone watching you and there are no undiscovered places...
Dinner our first night in Vernazza...it was fabulous and the first truly delicious meal we enjoyed in Italy. We ate cheap in Rome, and cheap doesn't buy much. Here we had fresh anchovies, and they were fabulous! Previously I had been repulsed by these tiny fish of the sea, but fresh from the ocean (caught that day) and drizzled with olive oil and lemons they were fantastic. Jonathan order swordfish, and they brought him a plate with the entire cross-section of the fish. It looked like they just took a machete to the fish and whacked a piece out of the middle and slapped it on his plate; he loved it! It was also a catch of the day, literally. Vernazza and the rest of the Cinque Terre are dependent on the ocean and produce grown locally to survive. Very little is brought in from other places.
Hitting the five village trail...
We don't look like we've been at it long...still look a little too fresh faced!

Flashback to Cinque Terre

I had to flashback a little because I came across a whole different set of pics from Jonathan's camera from the trip. There are more pictures with us in them on his camera then on mine...so I'm going to put some up and then we'll pick up where we left off! Can you feel the romance of this place... the air is a divine co-mingling of herbs, lemons, and garden fresh produce growing harmoniously in their cliffside homes

The view from our balcony


The view from our bedroom window

Day 9: Tuscany, Gaiole in Chianti

This is our farmhouse at Borgo Argenina in Gaiole in Chianti. It was idyllic. A place you could probably live forever and feel you were always in a dream. Our hostess, Elena, was a little too outspoken, but her love for the region was contagious.
The beds were in the upstairs loft of the renovated farmhouse circa 995 A.D.
This is our front door. Couldn't you just come home to this place and be happy forever?
Borgo Argenina used to be a little village, but these buildings were all that was left, and crumbling apart when Elena purchased the land and began an extensive renovation.
A view of the vineyards of Borgo Argenina

Day 7: Florence cont'd

Okay, I know it is touristy to show this pic, but I was impressed with these street artists. Could you draw the woman with the pearl earring out of sidewalk chalk and get these results? Not only are they good, but they can produce the image fairly fast too.
Never mind the BAD shadow from my hand( duh!), I was still learning how to take a picture with this fab camera. This is our room in Florence. The B&B was located in a nondescript building that was basically in the heart of Florence. I was glad this worked out that way, since it's not an exact science when you are booking rooms in cities you've never been to and don't really know the layout of. Any way it was a really old building with exposed beams. It was a lovely place, and the hostess was friendly, English speaking ( she's a native Canadian), and very informative. It's great to have a host who will give you valuable information to make the most of a limited timeframe. In hindsight though, we would have passed up on the museums in favor of experiencing a little more flavor of the city. I consider myself one who appreciates art, but I find it hard to really appreciate room after room of nothing but renaissance era Mary and bambini paintings. I don't have a grasp whatsoever of the technical side of painting or the level of difficulty in achieving a certain perspective, balance, lighting, etc. I'm way more simple than that. I appreciate what I like; what I see as beautiful and/or meaningful in some way. My favorite artist is Pino. Anyway, the point of this long-winded explanation is that Jonathan was bored to tears in the art museums (though he was everlastingly patient with my need to read everything and see everything), and I felt a little robbed at not seeing the Boboli gardens or the Medici's former residences.
This is the rooftop terrace at our B&B. It was lovely and a nice perk at an economically priced B&B.
Other than the view from the Duomo, this is the best place to appreciate fully the Florentine landscape. We actually walked here, to the Piazzale Michelangiolo. It took a little longer than I had planned, and since we were short on time, I would reccomend taking the bus if you wanted to see it and still take in some of the other great spots in Florence. This is definitely a tourist hotspot, but it is not convenient to the rest of town. It was lovely to be there at dusk and to take in some of the local musicians. Very romantic!

Day Six: Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance

This the duomo in Florence; we did climb the stairs to the top and that was a challenge for someone with my degree of claustrophobia. These stairs were irregular, steep, narrow, and there was no light or air save what was accessible from these little tiny windows in an otherwise darkened stairwell. I lived from one window to the next. One step in front of the other...When we finally arrived at the top and could see the vistas of Florence I sighed with deep relief. Sometimes I really feel I might die from my claustrophobia, it's like I can't take any air in, and I panic, and then my temperature rises so quickly I feel like I am cooking from the inside out.
These are the famous doors of the baptistery. They are sculpted of bronze. The sculptor of these doors was 23 when he won the commission against rival artists including Donatello, Brunelleschi, and other masters of the era.


This is the view from the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence.

Day Five: Cinque Terre

This is Corniglia, the third village of the hike. Isn't it beautiful? These narrow pastel high rises just cling to the landscape, interspersed with family plots of vineyards & gardens. It's such a simple, beautiful way of living.
This picture better illustrates the lovely pastels...
It is hard to tell, but this is actually a picture of the terraced gardens that are carved out of the cliffside. I'm really not sure how they till these things and maintain them, but I know it must be backbreaking, because there is no way to get traditional farming equipment or power tools of any kind up here. I'm sure do it the old fashioned way with some simple tools and a lot of sweat equity.
Manarola, village number 4. We were very excited to be so close to completing the hike, though we enjoyed every step of the way. It was challenging and fun!
At the last village, Riomaggiore, we decided to take the boat home to Vernazza. We wanted to see from a different vantage point the terrain we had covered and the villages from a different perspective. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pics from the boat because it was bumpy and moving quickly.

Day Four: Cinque Terre

It is a little bit more difficult to tell from this picture than I had hoped, but the villages of Cinque Terre are all painted in beautiful pastels with shutters and each day the people seem to do the same things. They tend their gardens, mingle with friends, stroll the town ( the entire village isn't any larger than an averaged sized neighborhood here in the U.S), hang the laundry, and make their meals from what they grow. The "grocery" store was a tiny touristy boutique with expensive dried pasta, a few crates of produce, and several shelves of other boxed goods. I never saw any locals in there. They make their own pasta, thank you. And their not shy to tell you how superior their foods are because they used nothing but the freshest locally grown (or caught) ingredients. There are no stand-alone homes. Just a jumble of tall buildings with narrow walks in between. A couple of the villages don't even allow cars because the lanes are too narrow for vehicles to fit


Here's Jonny at the town water fountain in Vernazza where we stayed. There may have been one more. They have these fountains all over Italy that constantly run and you just hold your water bottle (or your mouth) under the stream to get what you want. I was a little hesitant at first, but I was reassured it was pottable water. It doesn't take much time in the heat of a Roman summer afternoon before all fears depart; you've just GOT to have some water!
The ocean in the Cinque Terre was surreal. I have not retouched this photo at all. The water really was that clear. You could see whatever there was to see below the water's surface.
Jonathan couldn't miss an opportunity to show these young studs from Belarus that he could do anything they could do. These kids were like 15 & 17 and fluent in four languages. I truly envy that aspect of European education. I've never met a European who only spoke their native language. What is wrong with us in America? It is kind of short-sighted and pig-headed to provide our children with such a narrow view of the world. It's no wonder we get such a bad rap worldwide. We are a little too arrogant and a little too ignorant sometimes.
This cliff was half the size of the next one we came upon as we hiked the the five village trail of the Cinque Terre. Yes, we did see all five villages in one day. It was exhilarating and tiring. We didn't spend much time in each village. Only shot a few pics, grabbed a snack when needed, and kept moving on.