Sorrento - Florence - Cinque Terre

Sorrento and Amalfi

We left you in Rome in the last blog, and from there we moved on to Sorrento. We caught an early train from Rome to Naples, until then we had found the trains to be pretty good but this one lowered the standards dramatically. It was late, dirty, smelly and all round pretty nasty. There was no air conditioning and no lights (as we discovered when we went into a long tunnel and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face!). From Naples we caught the Circumvesuviana train to Sorrento it was almost as bad but way more crowded. Everything you hear about Naples is true, its dirty, full of graffiti and doesn’t feel safe. About halfway between Naples and Sorrento is the stop for Pompeii which is where we got off.

Pompeii is actually quite a big place and we found it quite surreal particularly when you see the casts of the bodies of the people who died there in the eruption. You can see the anguish and fear in their faces still. Much of the place is well preserved so you got a good idea of what it must have looked like before the eruption buried it. From Pompeii we continued through to Sorrento. We had a bit of trouble finding our accommodation which was outside the city especially when the bus driver told us to get on his bus, promptly set off in the wrong direction and then told us to get out after a couple of kilometres! (bus drivers have to get their kicks somehow...)

The next day we slept in then caught a bus through to Amalfi. The bus ride was interesting as the road makes most skifield roads in New Zealand look wide. It was pretty hair-raising at some points, barely wide enough for two cars, and a sheer cliff dropping like 200 feet to the water. The road was actually built out over the cliff too. We meet a couple of buses who had to back up in order to get past and a broken down vehicle being towed. Needless to say we thought a ferry ride back to Sorrento would be nice, and it is actually faster than the bus. Amalfi is visually stunning and the towns cling to the cliffs. The ferry ride back had the best views of the coastline. Sorrento is a real tourist town (lots of Americans and Brits) but has a laid back atmosphere. Due to a festival we had bus problems again and only just made it back to our accommodation on the last bus of the night.

Florence, San Gimignano and Siena

After enjoying the pleasures of the Circumvesuviana again, we headed through to Florence. Not being big art buffs (especially Jeff) we didn’t do much looking at art, well actually none at all, deciding instead that the entry fees would be better used to buy beer and wine. Florence is nice but its a biggish city so lacks the atmosphere of the smaller places. If you like art then its a winner, although you also have to like queuing... We spent a bit of time roaming the street and found a great Trattoria for dinner. I think the highlight of the trip so far for Bex was when the waiter told her in Italian, that her Italian was good! She was chuffed. The other good thing about the Trattoria was that it had the Champions League final playing. After watching the first half we headed to a bar to watch the seond half. There weren't as many places showing it as we thought there would be, given they are football mad, but we did find a good place.

The highlight of Tuscany for us was San Gimignano. It is a small village with cobbled streets and little alleys, which is perched on a hill with great views of the countryside (especially from the highest tower which of course we climbed). We didn't stay long here as it proved to be a bit of a logistical challenge and we didn't arrive until about 12.30pm. We then had a long hour and a half bus ride to Siena, which was not actually that long but was made to seem never ending by the 30 brats that were on the bus with us. Jeff actually had to get up at one point and stop one boy bullying another poor little boy on the bus.

Siena was a quaint little town, with no vehicle access in the old town centre it creates a great atmosphere. We sat in the main piazza Il Campo for ages just people watching, but mostly watching the little kids chase the pigeons (the techniques vary greatly, stalking seemed to work the best and running furiously while kicking legs out infront not so much). We decided to splash out and eat at the main piazza as well, which was fun. We ended up drinking a bit too much and almost missing our train back to Florence, turns out it wasn't the 15 minute walk the guy in the information centre told us it was... we did it in 20... running!

Pisa and Cinque Terre

From Florence we caught a train out to Pisa where we hopped off for a look at the tower, and yep, it is still on a lean. We spent most of our time having a good laugh at all the people taking photos of them holding tower up or pushing it over. We took some quick photos and bailed as someone was chasing us blowing a whistle really loudly, apparently you're not allowed on the grass...

We jumped back on the train and headed through to the Cinque Terre. The Ciqnue Terre (five villages) are set along a pretty rugged piece of coastline, that looks a bit like parts of New Zealand (without all the tourists). We had been trying to contact our accommodation for a couple of days (emails bounced back, phone calls not connecting...) so the tourist office rang them for us and they finally came and met us. When we got there we were told that they had given away our room and they only had a more expensive room available. We explained that we had tried to call and email but they didn’t care and were rude (in Italian of course). After another half an hour of waiting the tried to give us a really small room that is basically a broom closet with a toilet!!!

So back to the tourist office who only had one room in the whole of Monterosso and it was in a lady’s house. So we headed off there with our fingers crossed. Isabella was a lovely 83 year old lady who with a nice home. She was very friendly and despite not speaking any English we managed to communicate. After doing a bit of exploring and having dinner we came back and she shared with us some of her home made Limoncello. The recipe for this is, as far as our translation goes - juice and zest of ten lemons, a kg of sugar, a bottle of water and a bottle of 95% white spirits, tasty stuff but kicks like a mule!! So the inconvenience of the rude Italians turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

The next day, despite our first day of rain since we arrived, we caught a train to Riomaggiore (the first village) and once the rain stopped started the walk back between all the villages along a track. It was a nice walk, but we failed to see where they spent the 5 Euro per person charge to enter the park! The tracks were a bit dicey in some places especially as it had been raining. There are no hand rails or anything. We made it through from Riomaggiore to Manarola to Corniglia to Vernazza which took us a few hours. We decided not to do the last walk as it was the longest and steepest, so took a train back instead and Jeff had a swim. We went out for a fantastic meal that night, the best meal we had in Italy! It was spaghetti with clams and mussels, served in a giant bowl for two. We paid the bill and they gave us our 50 Euro note back along with our change by accident... so we went back when we realised and gave it back. They were so stoked that we had given it back they gave us a bottle of wine for our troubles. That's tonight's tipple!

We left the Cinque Terre and Italy this morning, and while we have many fond memories we will definitely miss Italy. The food, people, language, culture - everything - was an amazing experience.

Now on to our next task - to learn French...!

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Part of trip: Europe

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