Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre is a five (cinque) town (not terre?...?) hike just north of Tuscany (La Spezia is probably the easiest close city to find on a map). We have been using the Rick Steves Italy book for getting around some of the places. Fairly useful... He says you should go up the night before so you can get an early start but the hike (7 miles) should only take about 5 hours. He must be in pretty good shape... We did the hike from hardest to easiest. The book forewarns that the hike from the first town to the second is fairly challenging. It does not however point out that the hike from the second town to the third is at least as hard, if not worse (change of elevation wise). I've been running lately and I was a little sore the next day. Very pretty hike and nice little towns. Each town had its own feel.
We started off by driving to La Spezia Friday afternoon. We got to where we were staying around 9 pm. It was a small place up on the hill side. A man and his wife ran it. He, his parents, and his brother all lived on the same property. Above one of thier places, pretty sure it was above the parents, were a couple apartment like places. Not easy to find. I called the guy a couple times and he finally asked where we were and then came down the hill to get us. There is no way we would have found it otherwise. You literally pull into the guy's gated driveway.
La Spezia itself is pretty. Fairly modern. As we drove in there were restaurants, bars, big hotels... Not that there aren't restaurants and bars around, but these looked like bars in the states. Hard to explain at this point. After being here for three months, it was different.
Beautiful view from the room (bottom picture). It overlooked the city below and the harbor. La Spezia happens to also be an Italian Navy base.
We drove down to the train station and took the 10 minute train ride (vice hour drive) to the first town. The train just cut through the mountains were the road would have winded around them.

North to South.
Monterosso: The train station drops you off on a beach. The water is beautiful. Clear. Blue. A sandy beach.
From Monterosso to Vernazza is a pretty good hike up and down. You walk on the edge of vineyards and start to get some nice views.
In Vernazza we stopped for lunch. Really good pizza.
Next town was Corniglia. The hike to get there was somewhat painful. Probably because we, based on our book, figured the worst was past. Still nice views.
From Corniglia you go down 400 steps to regain the trail. On this side it is a very rocky, narrow beach. The trail itself is up about 40 feet and set back a little. Probably a good thing. At one point I looked over the side and laughed as I told Carey, "That old dude has no pants..." We kept walking for a short bit and noticed, either does that guy. I'm not in this to see a bunch of dudes butt cracks... Then it dawns on us (me, Carey, and Brianna), there are no women on that beach... Walk faster, nothing to see here... Just naked gay guys (a couple entertaining each other). Later we reread the book a little more and it does point out a nude beach that as soon as the land becomes available the country is going to suck up as part of the trail and "clean up".
That brings us to Manarola. Tons of boats. No cars. A really big boat ramp. Time for gelato...
From Manarola to Riomaggiore is really were the trail started around the 1940's. The trail was made so guys and girls could walk from one town to the other, a lover's trail.
Once in Riomaggiore we caught the train back to La Spezia.
That night we had dinner in a nice little restaurant around the corner from where we were staying. Very good. I like the Northern Italy food and sauce better I think. The sauce is thicker. Around here I've had sauce that wasn't much more than olive oil with a little tomato to make it red.
All in all it was a nice hike. Great views. Worth the trip.

Some pictures of Rome

Day trip to Rome

Let's start by saying there should never be a DAY trip to Rome. You can't really see anything in Rome in a day... It will take days. Good thing we'll be spending the better part of a week there in November... Planning is a must. If you just decide to "go for it" or "wing it" you'll end up frustrating yourself...

We took a tour bus that you could hop on, hop off. It takes you by all the major sites (Coliseum, Pantheon, St Peters, the capital building...) It served its purpose. For instance, we can spend one entire day walking around the coliseum and the surrounding sites (probably just a few blocks worth of area). The area around the capital building could be another day. The capital is beautiful and there is what I think were ancient market areas behind it.

Long and short, Rome is amazing. It could be my (Randy) favorite place yet. OVER 2000 years of existance and history... Ruins, archeological sites, churches, the Vatican, museums, and it is laid out very nice (not crammed in like Florence). Clean too. We were excited to have the Retrosi's coming out in November to begin with, but now getting just a small taste of what we will be able to see...

Carey and I started our Italian class today also. Not your typical foreign language class. The instructor speaks Italian most of the time with a few key english words placed so you can follow some. Conversational from the start. I haven't done the homework yet but I did sit down with the Rosetta Stone and I will say just the one class made the Rosetta Stone make more sense. For instance verb conjugation (sono,e', siete, siamo...). All the same verb; I am, you are, we are, they are (don't quote me on the translation yet...). A long way to go!

Back to our roots...

This weekend we went to Cusano Mutri. It is a small hills side town about 50 km from here. An hour drive. My Great- Grandparents were from this town. As you get to the hills the scenery gets very pretty. Each turn onto a different road meant, for the most part a slightly smaller road. We had lunch and walked around the town. You can walk the entire town in about an hour. That is walking every street, up and down the hill... English... not so much. Its not their responsibility to be able to talk to us. (Carey and I start Italian classes in a week!) The Rosetta Stone is good, but if you don't/ can't set aside an hour or so of your day... Anyway, nice little town. Once we can speak a bit more we will look into contacting the church or something to find out what we can about the family. There were two buisnesses that still have family names. Crocco was a jewerly store (and a convience store in the next town over), and Petrillo was a small bar/ snack shop/ restaurant.
That night Carey and I went out to dinner just outside Naples. Very good. It is still vacation time for the Europeans so the resteraunt was pretty empty. Four courses later we were full. Wine is just as cheap as water (or water is as expensive as wine...). You can get a good bottle of wine for a few euro. We got a carafe the other night for 1 euro (3 glasses worth). There is some expensive stuff out there but I think at that point you are paying for a name, or for being a tourist. 55 euro was it. Good luck getting four courses, wine, and really good service in the states for that!

Safari in Bari

So we went to the Safari in Bari (southeast coast). It was about a 3 1/2 hour drive from here. The first part of it was through hilly/ mountain roads. The Italians don't bank there roads like we do. You take it for granted and don't really notice the banking until its not there. We were following another family so for about an hour it was realistically white-knuckle driving. It was about half way through, during some hard concentration, that I realized it was because of a lack of banking...


The Safari was neat. It started off with different variants of deer (like most zoos), then had lions and tigers and bears (oh my...), giraffes, lamas, zebra, bison, flamingos, monkeys. After the drive through portion we walked around the amusement park part. There is a monkey train you can take. One of the coolest things I've ever been on. You bring your own big bag of peanuts. They stick you in a tram car which is double fenced (you are in the cage), and there are little tubes to pass the peanuts through. The tram starts going and gets around the corner and suddenly there are monkeys ALL OVER the outside of your cage! We were jamming peanuts through as fast as we could, laughing the whole time. Near the end we figured out there were a couple of the smaller monkeys that could fit their hands into the door. So you hand the peanut directly to them. It’s like a baby's hand, small and smooth. After that we let the kids ride a few rides and then headed back. We got to experience another part of European culture. We didn't bring any gas coupons with us so we got to pay 40 euro for 30 liters of gas ($57 for 8 gallons). With the gas coupons we pay about 1/2 what the Italians pay...


All in all a good day.

Day at the beach

Found a nice beach. Without traffic it’s about 1 hour 20 minutes away. (over an hour doesn't seem so bad when 37 miles of Naples area beaches have come up with to much bacteria...)
So we got up at about 7:30 and were getting on the road around 9:00. We needed gas though so we stopped. Randy needed a pen and nicely asked the gas station guy for a "pene". Some of you are laughing already... The correct word would have been "penna." Look it up you'll enjoy...
So a little over an hour if there is not much traffic. Today was not one of those days. There is a lot of beach traffic. 5 traffic lights can really mess with the Italians' day. It added an hour. It’s not for lack of trying either. More driving differences here. Ever seen a two lane road become 4? Better yet ever seen someone pull out into the on coming lane to pass and THEN someone behind him also wants to pass but faster so now they are three abreast into oncoming traffic. In the states this would be a guaranteed head on. Not here. Hardly a slow down. Three cars move a little right, so one is on the shoulder, the on coming car moves to his right so he is on the shoulder and they all blow past each other doing about 40 mph (closing at 80...). Left hand turning lanes are only left hand turning lanes if you want to turn left. Otherwise it is another straight lane. So we got to the beach. The parking lot was full so we did what any good Italian would do; we parked in a fairly random spot on the side of the road. Once on the beach there are tons of umbrellas and chairs to rent BUT there is also a good size spot for us to just claim a spot and put out towels, which is what we did. It is a nice beach, called Sperlonga. Very clear water. We're pretty sure the rumors of Europeans lying around topless have been exaggerated. We did see one woman walking around topless and a couple that weren't modest changing/ fixing tops but that's about it. The ride home was a little better. More of the same for some but not as backed up. Only a half hour of delay.
The pics: First two are downtown Naples. The second today's beach. The road on the side of the hill is what we came in on. This is north of Naples (vice South like Amalfi).

The building is in Friesling Germany. Hotel Agora is were we stayed before we got into housing. When was the last time you stayed at a hotel and the neighbors walked thier sheep down the road?