Day 8 - Anthony & Liza's European Vacation

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We pack up and head out of Lerici knowing this is a place we want to return to and spend at least a couple of days enjoying the beach and exploring the castle. We decide to head to Cinque Terre, yet again not having an actual location or address to go to, we simply follow this crazy winding road with Jane the Waze Captain giving us instructions most of the time Anthony vehemently disagrees with "her" and continues to call her names. The roads are narrow, and steep, we miss a turn and disagree on whether to follow Jane as she recalculates or actually attempt a U-Turn in the middle of a mountain road that is at best 1 ½ lanes. Suffice it to say that we wait for a round-about as per Jane's instructions versus attempting a suicidal three point turn on the edge of a cliff!!!! I won’t bore you with the details of a trip down a mountainside that I would rather forget, especially the part where a Van passed us on a switchback right turn - that was blind to anyone coming up the hill - with a 1000 foot drop to the Mediterranean …. My fingernail marks are still in the roof of the rental car. We find this little town deep in the valley on the shore of the Mediterranean and it's so small and crowded, we decide we've seen enough and it's time to head to Parma. We still haven't had a coffee yet, so we are on the hunt for a little breakfast, or at least a coffee. Along the back roads towards the Autostrada, we see a little hotel perched on the cliff, advertising a restaurant and breakfast, so we stop. We find that no one is in the dining room, but there are the remnants of what had been a continental breakfast buffet, and the owner graciously offers us the opportunity to enjoy a few pastries and have a coffee. We grab and outdoor seat overlooking the ocean and enjoy a little break. I head to the "toilette" and this becomes my first encounter with a uni-sex bathroom with three stalls - two of which have a floor level toilet, one a regular toilet, I use the regular toilet assuming that the floor level porcelain is for men. I chuckle and tell Anthony about it, little do I know that the laugh will soon be on me.

We to head out to Parma first and then Modena along the route before our planned arrival in Venice. Again we have the issue of not having a specific place in Parma to go to, Anthony likes to fly by the seat of his pants and decides I should just google it and find a location near the center of the city, so I do. Of course when we arrive Anthony is sure that Jane has taken us to a "stupid" spot, no where near where we want to be, and so begins the circling of the city of Parma. Three and a half circles of the city to be exact, before finally pulling into a parking garage we had passed three times. It is a good 20 minute walk to the Piazza we want to be visit. We now realize that the garage Jane recommended was one block from the piazza, but who am I to say "I told you so?" 😊. Actually I just kept reminding myself we were on our 2nd Honeymoon and I should just bite my tongue, and yes I managed to do that! We find a lovely little pizzeria, and we order Prosciutto and Melon and a plate of Parmesano Regianno, which came with honey! Amazing, melt in your mouth, almost as good as sex, food of the gods! As we make our way back to the car, Anthony experiences a moment in time that can only be described as Keystone Cops, suffice it to say I had to go get the car and he had to find a WC, it all worked out in the end!

As we leave Parma we at least have a destination. There is a Balsamic vinegar producer which states they have been operating for 5 decades, so I enter the address. The ride is uneventful and beautiful as we watch the countryside go by. We arrive in Modena and rather easily find the place, but it's closed. We don't give up, we google again and find another, this one has a better website that includes their hours of operations. We enter the address and head out. We have 30 minutes to get there! It turned out to be a wonderful experience as we meet the great-granddaughter of the founding father of this business and we are given a personal introduction to balsamic vinegar, their history, and their process. They do not call it vinegar, and we are provided a tasting of many of their products, along with some parmesan flavoured cookies (the owners own secret receipe) - which are amazing. Withseveral parcels in tow, we head out towards Venice. At least we have the hotel address to navigate to, phew!

All is going smoothly, we've got tunes on, we're singing and enjoying the trip (except for the crazy drivers), and then Jane gets confused, or maybe we do. Either way we miss a turn, and then we back track and finally 20 minutes after we should have, we arrive at the Crowne Plaza Venice East. We are tired and I’m wanting to take a long hot bath, unpack my things, write my blog and go to sleep, but wait! Anthony wants to make our way to Venice and have a late dinner. I whine a bit, but get ready anyway and we ask at the desk about how to get to Venice. Well, their instructions and directions were a little less then clear - but we start out thinking we know where we are going. Unfortunately, we don’t. A good 15 minutes of going the wrong way and we finally figure it out, Jane takes some abuse from Anthony, and we turn around and head the opoosite way. We finally arrive and park, learning that you have two parking choices. Pay for ONE hour and keep coming back to pay for the next hour, or pay for a FULL day. Well, it's 9 pm, we only want to look around and have a pizza, so we pay for an hour. We head into Venice, crossing a bridge and we really don't have to go too far before we find just the right place to have a pizza and a glass of wine, it's right on the Grand Canal. Its late - so it’s not very busy. The food is fresh, the pizza amazing and the wine is adequate. Anthony does have to go renew our parking once, but it wasn't too far. Leaving Venice was much easier than getting there since we now know where we are going - although Anthony has decided that Jane is the problem. He doesn’t like her…. So we fire Jane and hire Randy -and suddenly it’s a guy giving a guy directions - and somehow that's easier! A good night's sleep was had by all....

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