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Published: April 25th 2010
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I am writing this all very much after the fact, but I figured better late than never, and this will be one of my last blogs!
Em Deddens came to visit this past week despite the fact that it seemed as if the fates were conspiring to make sure she didn't! Thanks to Mr. Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland, Em's initial flight was cancelled. No one quite knew how much trouble the volcano was going to cause, and Em was put on a flight for the next day to Scotland with the plan being to bus everyone on the flight to London Heathrow. At the time, European airspace was opening back up and everyone figured they would be able to make their connections at Heathrow. Wrong. Poor Em. One bus ride later and Em is stuck in London with no immediate way to get to Nice. British Airways handled the situation as best they could and put Em in a hotel for a couple of nights. Fortunately, she had other friends living and working in London who happened to be around and off for the weekend, so it ended up being somewhat of a blessing in disguise since she got to visit
other friends as well. Of course, European airspace wasn't opening anytime soon, and so Em finally decided to try her luck with trains. She is far more courageous than I think I would have been in her shoes. So, she ended up getting a seat on the Eurostar and taking a train from London to Paris. Once in Paris she had to fight her way from Gare de Nord to Gare de Lyon, but apparently a nice Frenchman helped her find her way. (He also asked her out to coffee, but we're not going to be picky about our knights in shining armour for the moment.) With another stroke of luck, my friend Hannah happened to be in Paris that weekend and not traveling, so she met Em at Gare de Lyon and helped her find her way onto a train. Thus, sums up the rather horrific experience Em had getting to me! Funny though, just as Hannah was telling me that she would be more than happy to help Em out, she found out that her older brother was going to be stuck in Nice for an evening, and he ended up spending the night on my living room
floor. Just funny how things work out, but it was nice that we could all help each other! I was so relieved to finally see Em step off that train in Nice that I actually teared up a little bit. Don't judge. I was so glad that a) she had actually made it b) she had not been trampled by a post-strike crowd at the French train stations trying to force their way onto trains c) her plane had not gone down in a cloud of volcanic ash and d) I was just so happy to see her!! So we came back to Cimiez, dropped of her things, went to the grocery store, and proceeded to devour more bread, cheese and wine than two sane people should--all the while talking at about 5,000,000 words per minute. Thus began our wonderful adventure.
Heaven on Earth
The morning after Em arrived we hopped on another train (seriously, I told you she was more courageous than I am, and I have no clue how she handled all this travel) and headed off to Cinque Terre. This had been our plan from the start to spend a few days in Cinque and
a few days around Nice. For those of you who know me well at all you know that I have been dying to go to Cinque for who knows how many years. I wanted to save this trip for my last hoorah, and I was so glad that Em was coming with me. Obviously we had to alter our plans a little bit, and so we ended up staying three nights in Cinque--Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We stayed in Riomaggiore which is at one of the far ends of the chain of villages--Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore. Our first day was spent hiking from Riomaggiore to Vernazza, and we took the train to Monterrosso the next morning (only in the interest of time) and hiked all the way back to Riomaggiore. All of our time in between hikes was spent eating, drinking wine, and playing with all of the cats...really, I'm not kidding. It was like heaven.
I wish words existed to describe the beauty of Cinque. They just don't. It was utterly breathtaking. I spent two days stuttering and just saying over and over and over, "I can't even...". We also passed a ton of French
hikers who were saying the exact same thing in French, so I'm not the only one who felt this way. The villages seem so organic--just growing out of the side of the cliffs and growing upwards with buildings on top of buildings on top of buildings and everything just cascading into the sea. We hiked through vineyards and along cliffs where all we could see for miles was vineyards falling into the sea. The words amazing and incredible and breathtaking just don't even cover it.
The food I can describe 😊 I had the banginest Focaccia Oliva ever in Manarola--stopped by the next day to get some more, and the wonderfully kind man who works there just smiled and gave me a knowing nod when I asked for the Focaccia Oliva again. Seriously, one of the most amazing things I have ever eaten--just focaccia bread with green olives baked into it. For dinner I always had seafood and pasta. The wonderful thing about true Italian food is that it is so simple. It takes so incredibly different from what we consider to be "Italian" food. The pasta has an entirely different taste--usually because it's made by hand. The sauces
are lighter. The vegetables are fresh and so is the seafood. Everything tastes amazing. And the tiramisu. Well, I won't even go there 😊 Neither will I for the Panacotta. And the wines. The wines from Cinque and La Spezia are AMAZING. Lighter and always a little bit more sweet. Never too sweet and never too dry. Some of the most amazing I have ever had. If I could come home with a suitcase full of wine and focaccia I absolutely would. We ate bruschetta and drank white wine at a cafe by the port in Vernazza our first night before dinner, and it was some of the best and freshest bruschetta I've ever had in my life. Not to mention we were sitting in one of the most beautiful places on Earth! Em and I both kept having to reality check and keep telling ourselves it was all real.
AND there were cats EVERYWHERE! They came onto the terraces at the restaurants and cafes--I fed half of my mussles to one the first night I think. They are on the hiking trails at the picnic points and in the towns. And Em and I never got tired
of seeing them! We made lots of new friends haha.
I can't say enough how much I loved Cinque. I could stutter and stumble via text for pages, but really the only way to understand it is to go! The only thing I wished was that I had heard more Italian. It can be a little tourist trap, but the Italians there are wonderful and kind and seem genuinely glad that people love to visit.
Em's Day in Nice
When Em and I made it back to Nice we only had two nights and a day. The first night we got back we wandered through Vieux Nice and went to a restaurant I like to have dessert and tea/coffee. Again, the tiramisu. This tiramisu was just as good, maybe even better, than the tiramisu in Cinque! The next day I gave Em a quick tour of the city so she saw my park and the monastery garden in Cimiez, Vieux Nice, the port, the park by the port and the beach. We wandered through all of the markets, we laid out on the beach, and we ate some of the best crepes in all of
Nice. It was absolutely wonderful.
I loved having Em here. It was like a breath of fresh air to have someone from home visit, and it really reminded me of why I am excited to get back.
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