The Other Side

Days 102-103, Friday 28th & Saturday 29th November 2008 (Al)

Waking up after our two sunny days on Italy’s Ligurian Coast, we found the weather had turned. Hard rain was falling at a 45 degree angle in Riomaggiore. Feeling glad that we walked the Cinque Terre when we did, we and our train went via Genoa to Milan.

Between these two cities, as we moved further north and inland, it had clearly been snowing! A couple of inches had already fallen that day, and it looked like a wintery wonderland outside – albeit a wonderland that makes you want to stay inside.

It was about this time that we realised our friend Sara, whom we caught up with in Florence, was going to be in Milan on this same night (we hadn’t planned on staying there, but the ride to Salzburg seemed too far to go in one day).

Arriving in Milan, we found some accommodation near the station, only just managing to not slip over in the snow while carrying our heavy backpacks. By this time Cathy’s cold-like symptoms made me think that she had a cold. Her prickly demeanor confirmed that she was sick, tired, hungry and consequently grumpy. I set off to hunt and gather some food for me to bring back to the cave, where Cath was using the internet. Turns out the Japanese Pizzeria Restaurant next door had large, cheap pizzas so it wasn’t actually that hard… It was so good, in fact, despite its dubious cultural authenticity, that we took Sara there for dinner later on (and were further confused to hear the waiters and management speaking Mandarin). 

Because we couldn’t find cheap accommodation in Salzburg until Sunday night, and we thought that at least one of us should see this city now that we were here, we stayed another night in Milan. On Saturday I left Cathy to rest and recuperate, and went for a city walk with Sara. It was cold, but the snow was melting and it was not raining for the most part.

(Note from Cath – I was so happy to have peace and quiet. But I was not counting on the hostel having a resident African Parrot. He was cute when he said ‘ciao’ and ‘hello’ and tried to sing, but less so when he made phone ringing and even SMS beeping noises. Constantly.)

Snowy sculpture garden

The beautiful Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, where all of the expensive stores tend to be. On the main intersection above you can find Prada, Louis Vitton, Argentuell (sp?) and McDonald’s. A restaurant here had virtually the same pasta dish on the menu as I had the night before at the Japanese-Italian-Chinese place. I had spent 4.20 Euro - here it was 17 Euro!

The Galleria leads through to the main Piazza and the imposing Duomo. Begun in 1386, it was not considered finished until 1965 – restoration work of the facade was started in 2007!

After looking inside (gothic style, similar to many others), we headed up to the terraces which were closed earlier in the day due to ice. Every surface seems to be carved or sculpted ornately.

Great views from the upper terrace.

The upper terraces, with some of the surface snow and ice shovelled to one side

After a cheap pizza for lunch, we visited the Ambrosio Museum and Bibliotek to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Atlantic Codex (the book with his amazing sketches of machines) which is stored here. Turns out it is never on display, it is firmly locked up with copies on display. Since there was a large poster depicting the sketches in the ticket area, we decided to save ourselves some Euro.

My saved Euro were spent on a large chocolate donut

A quick walk through Castello Sforzesco on the way back to our hostel

For dinner that night, we couldn’t go past the same Japanese Pizzeria – mainly because it is cheap, tasty and 12 steps from the door of our building. Afterwards we said our final goodbyes to Sara (again) and prepared for a day on the train tomorrow.

Day 101, Thursday 27th November 2008 (Cath)

Today was our back-up day – another one predicted to be full of sunshine, just in case we needed it to finish a section of the walk we couldn’t handle on the first day. Of course, being superfit and tough, we  had powered through the whole thing yesterday and now had a whole spare day up our sleeves.

I thought it would be nice to visit the nature interpretation centre, a short walk around the cliffs to the south of Riomaggiore - just, you know, to interpret some of the natural things we were seeing, in the convenience of a single centre. It turned out nature had other ideas.

Path closed due to adverse weather conditions (it was drizzling and we supposed it was deemed there was a risk of rockslides)

‘Ha! We’ll show you rockslides!’ we said, and scrambled up the cliffs nearby.

It didn’t take us very long to feel we’d exhausted all the fun Riomaggiore had to offer us for the morning, and we had a train pass to use, so we headed to the station and hoped the clouds would break wherever we were going.

 Riomaggiore – the sky was definitely looking less friendly today.

Hmmm, the sky looks blue over in Monterosso – let’s do lunch there.

Sunny it was!

Lunch al fresco, or in this case – lunch al traffico. There were cars travelling at speeds of up to 30km/hr whizzing past a metre to my left. Extreme dining! 

It w0uld have been a waste of a sunny day if we didn’t eat a gelato each.

After catching the train back to ‘Rio’ and freshening up, we joined the locals on Via dell’Amore for our last Cinque Terre sunset (and, as it would turn out, our last Italian sunset).

Sunset watchers: just checking out the fishing conditions, or something amore?

Day 100!! Wednesday 26th November 2008 (Al)

I don’t think we realised until dinner time today that it is, indeed, day 100 of our trip. Very exciting to reach this milestone, especially since the longest either of us had been away from home before was just under half that amount of time. It also brings us closer to seeing our family, friends and loyal readers once again.

Back to the events of today.  It was the day we had looked forward to and the weather was looking favourable. We started the walk around 10:30, with section 1 taking us from Riomaggiore to Manorola in about 25 minutes (including stopping for photos). There is a relatively flat, paved path making this quite easy. Named “Via dell’Amore”, it is lined with benches where, presumably, lovers can canoodle.

It begins – Via dell’Amore

The destination – Monterosso – in the far distance

Precarious cliffs – it felt so good to be beside the seaside

Padlocks on a fence – gnaaawww

Manorola – similar to, but sleepier than Riomaggiore

 Rules: White-walled dancing shoes from the 1930’s are allowed, brocaded high-heels are not, children dressed in overalls should be accompanied by an adult lest they be beaten up for wearing overalls

So adventurous

Lil’ truck

Lil’ truck drivers

Terre numero tre – Corniglia. Quick lunch stop (prosciutto panini) on via Fieschi before setting off, ascending through vineyards and olive groves

 Olive collecting nets – Cathy was wishing she had brought a nice sauv blanc and a tooth pick.

<Insert clever caption here> 

The view looking back towards Corniglia

A lonely local resident 

Vernazzo –  it took a lot of steps up and then down to reach here, but the next and final walk to Monterosso (visible in the distance) would be the longest

Cathy liked these decorative flowers, made from plastic bags and hanging over a few doorways in Vernazzo

Still bragging about the World Cup after all these years

Just testing how sturdy the bridge is – quite sturdy it seems

Cathy at sunset just outside Monterosso

Monterosso beach, looking back towards the four other towns

We had a celebratory drink (which came with free crisps and little pickled onions), before catching the train back to Riomaggiore for a well-earned hot shower and pizza.

The path had been more challenging (in a good way) than we had heard, we only occasionally passed other people and they all shared our good mood, and we didn’t feel cold until the sun went down. Expectations exceeded.

Day 99, Tuesday 25th November 2008 (Al)

The weather forecast looked positive - 8 degrees but no rain, perhaps even some sun – so we boarded the train and soon we were bound for the Cinque Terre. Being back on the train was the first time that I felt like we were travelling again. We have really become train people and love travelling this way.

After 20 minutes on the train, the sun came out and stayed for the rest of the day. This made for a wonderfully scenic journey through the Tuscan hills, through vineyards, past hill top villas and snow capped peaks:

After several changes (including a rather unpleasant stop in Pisa, with a woman vomiting near us as we ate a slice of pizza) we caught our first glimpse of the rugged coastline that forms the setting for the Cinque Terre. Literally translated as “Five Lands”, it is the name given to the National Park surrounding the five towns that cling to these cliffs, spread roughly 9 kilometres apart. We stayed in the southernmost village, Riomaggiore, which we were able to explore before sunset after an efficient check-in to our guesthouse (‘This is your room – any problema, ringa my bell’):

This is a beautiful town, but to spend any signifcant length of time here you’d really have to like walking up stairs and uphill. Also, it is relatively quiet at this time of year, which means that there are only 1 or 2 restaurants open for dinner, each with only 3 or 4 tables of diners at a time. But, as we would discover the next night, it was never the same two restaurants! They seem to have a low-season rotation system. Luckily and to Cathy’s delight, most of them serve at least one dish using the local specialty, pesto. And spaghetti with pesto and potatoes seemed like great fuel for the long walk ahead of us the next day.

Day 98, Monday 24th November 2008 (Al)

At the moment, we are planning our movements specifically around the weather outlook for the Cinque Terre coastal walk. Rain was expected, and we felt we had done everything we wanted to do in Florence (especially as most attractions are closed on Mondays), so we decided to go to Siena, an hour away by bus. Sara came with us, for a day trip before she left Florence for Venice the next day.

In Florence and on our arrival in Siena, it was 2 degrees (according to a sign we saw from the bus) and raining heavily! Just awful weather… While working out where we were supposed to be going, we sought refuge in a cafe across the road from the bus station. A glorious hot chocolate (the kind that tastes like melted chocolate and needs constant stirring lest it solidifies) was demolished by each of us.

Finding our guesthouse wasn’t too difficult, allowing us all to freshen up, dump our things and venture out into the drizzle. Piazza del Campo was our first stop – if you have seen the new Bond movie ‘Quantum of Solace’, the opening chase through a crowded piazza was filmed here. It was not crowded today. We figured that in winter, most tourists mainly stick to the large cities like Rome and Florence. It was their loss – the weather eventually cleared up enough for us to see the sights and enjoy some good food.

The red (I suppose you could call them sienna) bricks and roofs of Siena – we couldn’t climb the Bell Tower as it was raining. We asked the not-too-helpful woman at the counter if it would likely open this afternoon given the rain had eased to almost nothing now. A wry smile and a shrug of the shoulders was the only reply. We were seeking an answer along the lines of “if it does not rain for the rest of the day, then yes”. We were dreaming…

Sara and I posing for a photo – can’t remember why this turned into a matrix-style fight scene pose, but it does look whimsical, and boy-howdy do I like whimsy!

Not quite lunch time yet, so we visited the Duomo. Not quite as impressive on the outside as Florence or perhaps Milan’s (as I visited the following week) but it is noteworthy as the ornate marble work on the outside continues on the inside. The other Duomos mentioned have rather plain interiors.

Complete with sculptures by Michelangelo (being restored) and Donatello (above)

The subtle, restrained Library

The warning sign on the way up to the unfinished terrace – very ominous

Gorgeous red rooves, gorgeous Tuscan hills. These views alone (from the terrace of an unfinished facade of the Duomo) would have made the trip to Siena worthwhile.

Lunch was the Tuscan equivalent of a meal deal – pasta, crostini and wine for E8.50 sounded great until it came out, served on plastic microwaved plates with a plastic fork and serviette in plastic wrapping! It warmed us up though, which was good as the rain returned soon after.

None of us are particularly knowledgable on saints, but we were intrigued when our guide book told us that St Catherine’s thumb and preserved head are on display in St Catherine’s cathedral. We had seen other body parts that are now holy relics (and still don’t really understand them),  but we’d never heard of a saint’s head being on display. From the distance at which you can view it in its small glass case, it kind of looks like a plastic fake head. The thumb, though, you can see up close – it pretty much looks as a really old severed thumb would look.

After saying goodbye to Sara as she hopped on the bus back to Florence, it was time for dinner. We were somewhat soaked from the search after still not having bought an umbrella (‘we only have to get through another two weeks…’), but eventually found a very small but inviting place. The BEAUTIFUL rustic Tuscan meal (beef and potatoes for Cath, penne pomodoro for Al, with insalata mixte and a chocolate tart and a cake with pine nuts and cream for dessert) was fantastic. The decor, wooden stools, communal tables and friendly staff gave the place a nice ambience – the only incongruous thing was the background music, which from time to time lapsed into such classics as Ice Ice Baby and Owner Of A Lonely Heart!