(Day 1) The first long day

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It never fails. Whenever we have an early morning flight I never get to go to sleep regardless of how early I start getting things together, and this was no exception. We had a 6:35am flight out of Frankfurt Hahn to Milan Bergamo, which meant that we had to be in the car driving down the road by 4am. Ugh. I'm SO not a morning person. I can still be up at 3am but PLEASE don't ask me to wake up and function at that time. So, I didn't get to sleep Sunday night. Luckily, we were doing the planes, trains, and automobiles thing all Monday morning so I was able to sleep then. I got about an hour's sleep on the way to the airport, about another hour on the plane, and close to another hour on the bus from Bergamo airport to Milan. I had to wake up and function at this point because we had a few hours layover in Milan to check things out, take pictures, and eat breakfast before our train to Cinque Terre.

I'm sure I'll say this again (probably at least several more times) but Matt and I aren't huge museum people. That being said, once you take out the museums and the opera (also not a huge "to-do" for us), there's not a ton to do in Milan so a few hours was sufficient for us. We took the subway from the train station to the Duomo and got some great pictures. Last summer when I was there with Hillary they were in the middle of cleaning and restoring the building so we got some great shots of scaffolding then. It was nice to have some gorgeous, clear shots of the architecture. We didn't go in...I've already been inside of it and to Matt, most churches look alike inside. Next to the Duomo is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. It's a 19th century building that has been turned into a fantastic ritzy open-air mall. It's beautiful to walk though but the big attraction here for tourists is the bull. There's a mosaic picture of a bull in the floor and it's tradition to plant your heel in his private parts (this is a family blog so I'm keeping it clean) and spin three times. There's actually a hole there now from all the ladies that do this in their high heels. As bad as we felt for the bull, we both went for a spin 😊

Aside from the "mall" and the Duomo, that was about it for Milan. There is one thing that I would have loved to see but it just wasn't possible. Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is in Milan but you have to reserve tickets just to get in to see about a year in advance, from everything I've read. No thanks. We wandered a little looking for food...I think I got a croissant for breakfast and, well, we may have gotten gelato. Hmmm...gelato...yummmm. Let me take a minute to tell you a little bit about this wondrous food group (yes, it gets a group all to itself) and mention that we had gelato probably twice a day every day of our trip. Seriously. I'm not joking. If you want a simple explanation of what it is, it's ice cream, but holy cow it's SO much more than just "ice cream". It's lighter and tastier and more heavenly than any ice cream you've every had. As I'm typing this I'm craving it actually. I took a picture of one of the gelaterias (gelato shops) for you so you could see it. It's all mixed up (fresh, I'm guessing) and is what Rick Steves calls "edible art"...and that's exactly what it is. (Rick Steves writes the guide books I like to use, by the way. He has a show on PBS...check it out.) You can often find gelato in regular cafes and restaurants, not just gelaterias, and if you do there's usually a window with the gelato case right on the sidewalk. You order, pay, and keep on walking with no need to walk in and deal with the people getting real food.

So, at this point it's around noon and we're leaving Milan and heading to Cinque Terre. I slept most of the train ride there...the ride was a couple of hours long and it was nice to get some uninterrupted sleep. I was a pretty poor conversationalist during this part of the trip. Matt probably counted the silence as an extra perk in addition to being on vacation lol.

Lots of people have never heard of the Cinque Terre...I know I hadn't until we moved here and talked to people who had been there and loved it. Cinque Terre means "Five Lands" in Italian. It's literally 5 towns on the coast that were built into the cliffs and hills. It's quiet and gorgeous and was full of Americans when we were there, so apparently it isn't THAT unknown.

First of all, it's pronounced "TCHEEN-quay TAIR-ay", just so you can sound just a little bit Italiano yourself should you happen to want to talk about my blog to someone (not likely, but you never know...it could happen!). The towns run in a line along the coast and can be reached from one another by train, bus, ferry boats, or by foot but the best way to reach it initially is by bus or train. The walking, probably as much as the water and coastline, is one of the major attractions to Cinque Terre. There are paths that connect all five towns as well as ones that wander up into the hills. It's a national park and you pay a daily fee to be able to walk the paths. Thankfully, they have Cinque Terre card that covers the park fees and also allows unlimited usage of the buses and trains (the boats aren't included). The five towns (I know you were dying to ask) are Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore, in that order (from west to east...or is that north to south? The coastline slants so it's up to you) along the coast. We stayed in Monterosso al Mare at a cute little hotel on the beach called Hotel La Spiaggia. "La spiaggia" means "the beach", by the way. The beach was more rocks than sand but the water was gorgeous. It's run by a very friendly man named Andrea who speaks great English. Andrea was extremely helpful and supplied us with walking maps, train times, and restaurant recommendations during our stay.

So, we got checked in, dropped off our bags, admired our large (for Europe) room WITH A BALCONY and went exploring. We walked down to the water where Matt gave me a rock-skipping lesson. Yes, I'm pathetic and didn't know how to skip rocks before this. I have to say that I got kind of decent at it that afternoon though! Then we got some gelato, explored the town and some of the hills, and started looking for somewhere to eat. The Italians all eat dinner late so it can be difficult to find a full meal around 5 or 6 in the evening. Italians eat dinner around 9pm or so, sometimes later on the weekends. Places that cater to tourists will open earlier but there are always snack shops selling sandwiches and mini pizzas so you don't starve to death. We ended up settling on a place right across from our hotel. Well, actually the restaurant was a couple of doors down but the seating was across the street and overlooked the beach. It cost us 30 Euros for dinner, which we thought was spectacular considering our view. We both had pasta "levantese". This area of Italy is the birthplace of pesto and levantese means that they put both marinara sauce and pesto sauce on your pasta. It's great...try it sometime. I had gnocchi and Matt had a type of pasta called trofie that's unique to this region of Italy (Google it for pictures and a description if you're interested). We finished off the evening with a walk and another gelato (are you seeing a theme here?) and called it a night. We had had a long day and had a big day of walking the next day that we needed to rest up for 😊

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Photos

The Bull
Poor guy...

Gelato
Yep...that colorful stuff overflowing each container is gelato. See what I mean about it being different?

The sea
The body of water along this coast is the Ligurian Sea. You can see one of the other towns (not sure which one) in the rocks.

House with cool statue
Can you see him? On the left it's the statue of a guy holding up the rock.

Statue
Here's a better shot of the guy holding up the rock. We don't know anything about this statue...who it is, when it was sculpted, or why.

Statue
Here's a closeup of him. Isn't Matt's zoom lens great?