We left Genova and headed up into the hills on our way to Cinque de Terre. We drove past some fabulous old Genoese buildings with statues and sculptures everywhere. Just outside the city, all of the houses had these frescoes of brickwork and archways – it wasn’t until we stopped at some traffic lights that I realized it was only painted on. It was very 3-D and looked really good – almost every house had it, cornerstones, over windows, over doors. I even saw some windows painted on that didn’t even exist! The one with the enormous cat arching it’s back (which didn’t move for quite some time) was what gave it away. We stopped at a little café and I had my first Italian espresso…. Yes, there is a definite addiction on the rise…
Mark says, “Cinque Terre is a very famous set of five towns on a stretch of rocky coastline…southeast of Genova. These towns seemingly cling to the very edge of the seaside cliffs. As the villages were once only accessible by boat, let’s just say that the roads into them are scarily narrow and windy, particularly when most of the other drivers are local Italians! (Michelle: OMG, windy country roads at home will never be as scary as these roads!)
The first town we came to was Monterosso al Mare, there were many tourists and cars at this one so we decided to view it from various high, road side vantage points instead of going into it. To say the view was spectacular would be an understatement – mountains, cliffs, the quaint town, whitish beaches, blue seas, and waves crashing onto rocks – all of these combined at this town.
On the way to the next town we happened on a monastery, can’t remember its name, but we stopped in for lunch and came away very satisfied after some mushroom lasagne and more picturesque views of the coastline. We also bought a bottle of homemade limoncello as well. (Michelle: and it was here that we discovered that Grappa was 40% alcohol!)
On the road again after lunch we turned down the road to Vernazza, but after driving for about 15 hell raising minutes only to arrive at a car park that was a good 1.5 km from the town, we decided to turnaround and try another town.
As it turns out we came across more spectacular road side vantage points of Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. We again decided to skip going into most of these towns after these views. We did decided to head into Riomaggiore, it looked great and had an amazing looking pathway half way up the cliff which connected it to Manarola.
It was pretty late in the day though and we discovered that parking in Riomaggiore was pretty much impossible. We were really disappointed as we wanted to walk the Lover’s Lane to Manarola, but figured this would just have to be something we did next time we were in Italy.
Once back on the main road (what a joke, it’s really nothing more than a standard 1 lane road) we pulled over to the side where there just happened to be a car park space to get our bearings and set the sat nav for Parma. We got out of the car to stretch our legs only to discover steps leading down the side of the cliff to a bar with another spectacular view of Riomaggiore. Many photo’s and gelati later, we made our way back to the car and headed for Parma. Some things are meant to be.
We could end the day there but it is worth mentioning that the sat nav proceeded to take us on roads that were even worse than the ones we had been driving on all day. We have no idea where it took us, suffice to say the road was never straight and the villagers who stared at us were definitely not used to cars or tourists! We did however eventually end up at Parma”.
Ahhh Parma – land of cheese and ham – and we had the BEST lamb chops ever for dinner that night!
No comments:
Post a Comment