Prego!

Church in Lucca

Yep, everything is ‘prego’ in the land that brought us pizza, Ferrari, Prada, Da Vinci and… Mussolini

Our first ‘big’ trip for a while took us on a 10 day whistlestop tour of the delights of Tuscany, sunny Cinque Terra and romantic Venice. Doing our usual habit of working right down to the bone on a Friday afternoon, we legged it to Liverpool station to get to Stansted as soon as possible to beat the weekend crowds. Despite the luggage restrictions of the recent heightened levels of security, we managed to get through much quicker than our other recent trips.

Keith Haring - A different side of Pisa

Pisa, our first destination, was quite a delight. Even though it does not have much to offer other than the Leaning Tower and…um, not much else we really did enjoy the place. We did the obligatory poses with the Tower and inspired others around us to experiment in some cheesey trick photography.

Seeking out some ‘alternative’ sights to visit, we trekked around town looking for a Keith Haring mural, to in the end find out that we had walked loops around it and had failed to check out the last wall of the church that it is painted on.

Obligatory cheesey posed picPisa's Cathedral

From Pisa it was onto Lucca , a medieval walled town which was full of Italian tourists. The main (sole) purpose of their visit was to shop (unsurprisingly)! While architecturally very much like Pisa, Lucca has that extra something which makes it a nice place to be rather than just a nice place to look at, perhaps something to do with the massive crowds out and about on the Saturday night? We dined on the best pasta ever sitting al fresco in the cold in the piazza, once you get over the calorie counting, eating in Italy has a lot to offer!

Damn, that's a big can of Coke!

Lucca's wall on a Sunday morning

We stayed in an old schoolhouse which was reminiscent of the hotel in the film ‘The Shining’. As is was low season, wings of the huge old building were closed off and as you walked through the long corridors and grand marble stairwells you would get an eerie feeling and wonder what the walls may have seen in their very long lifetime. We knew there were others staying there as you could hear voices, but for some reason we never crossed paths. We did have a spooky moment when we tripped into one of the dozens of ‘lounge rooms’ and found two little boys playing on their Playstation portables in the dark. We quickly retraced our steps and got out of there quicksticks!

As it seems with all Italian towns, every second building is a church, and as such on the Sunday morning we woke to a cacophony of chiming bells which seemed to go on forever. Mistakenly we chose to climb to the top of one of the bell towers just as one of the bells began to chime, fortunately the view of the expanse of terracotta roofs within the old walls just about made up for the damage to our hearing…

Tour de Lucca

Going for a morning stroll along the walls of the city (along with most of the towns residents it seemed) we ran into the ‘Tour de Lucca’, the final three laps of which went around the cobbled street running on top of the wall.

Then onto the Cinque Terra, by far our favourite spot on our trip. Nestled on the coast, the five quaint little fishing villages each had their own vibe. Blessed with sunny weather, we spent a day doing the coast walk trekking through the vineyards and olive groves between towns, and drinking and eating in between. It’s a wonder how much walking power gelato, pizza, wine and espresso gives you!

Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terra

Via del amore

The walk was really impressive, helped in no small part by the fact that it was stiflingly hot at a balmy 25 degrees… from Riomaggiore, there is a very civilised walk to Montarrossa (think the Bondi-Bronte walk), after which it starts to climb up into the hills through the Olive Groves.

The walk makes for a great day with the small towns along the way (each with it's own character), providing ample opportunities for sugar, caffine and alcohol induced refreshment. For such a short length of coastline there is an amazing variety of landscapes, from the rocky coast line to the lush green hills.

Part of the Cinque Terra Coast

Sunset in Riomaggiore

So relaxing was the walk that we only managed to make it to the fourth town, Vernazza, which we decided was out favourite and warranted an extended stay to enjoy another espresso and some dessert wine… and another gelato…. Fortunately for us a train line runs along the route, through an impressive series of tunnels and viaducts (impressive for some anyways), once again reminding us of man’s ability to use explosives!

We made it back to Riomaggiore in time for sunset, which we spent sitting out on the breakwater watching the sun set over the village.

Vernazza, Numero Quattro of the Cinque Terra

The theme continues

If you hadn’t gathered by now, this trip was about food, food and then everything else, perhaps unsurprisingly considering what was on offer… seafood, pasta, cheese, wine and coffee – why is it that some people have so much trouble making a decent coffee??

From the Cinque Terra it was on to the heart of Tuscany – Florence. Expecting an amazing renaissance experience, we were somewhat disappointed to discover that Florence is basically over-run with American, German and Japanese tour groups, even in the off-season. It was such that at times you could easily forget that you were in Italy, and feel that you had instead been transported to some renaissance theme park. Perhaps we had relaxed too much in Cinque Terra….

Florence's Bell Tower

Aimes and Firenza's 'skyline'

We can’t imagine just how busy it must get in summer, as despite the crowds there seemed to be very low hotel occupancy rates and we were able to get an awesome deal in a beautifully restored hotel, with artworks adorning every wall, exposed timber beams and luxurious heavy drapes. We received great Italian hospitality (especially compared with Venice!), the guy at reception even seemed slightly embarrassed when the subject of Australia v Italy at the World Cup and ‘Grosso falling down’ arose – he too knew it was a dive!

There was still much to enjoy despite the crowds, and as always there are plenty of opportunities for respite including the enormous Boboli Gardens and Piazzale Michelangelo with its magnificent view of the whole city, which really does give you an appreciation for the massiveness of the Cathedral.

Horse in Florence

We spent the best part of half a day in the Uffizi Gallery, having not been deterred by the hour queue in the chill of the early morning to get in. The extensive collection is truly impressive, however by the end of it you start to feel a little renaissanced-out. There is heaps to see in Florence, among many others some of our favourites were the Ponte Vecchio bridge, the gigantic Duomo, Pitti Palace, and the narrow streets to the south of the River Arno.

Of course the shopping options are endless, and despite doing too much browsing for some (and not enough for others) we barely scratched the surface.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there were again many culinary highlights, including the Pannini bar near Piazza della Repubblica which seriously has the best ham ever, not to mention the pretty good anchovies, salami, artichokes… you get the picture… yes we did eat there a bit… We also had some interesting Florentine pasta (peas and mince?) and even the Tuscan take on Chinese food (with mixed results).

Aimes in Sienna

Sienna's Doumo

To escape the crowds we took a day trip to sleepy Siena, another rural Tuscan town which was reminiscent of Lucca. City walls intact, old winding streets, bustling piazzas and churches on every corner, Siena is another example of Italy at its best. We found the Piazza del Campo (the enclosed main square, entered through narrow laneways) and main cathedral too be more impressive that any of Florence’s equivalents, including the famed Duomo, although perhaps it was just the setting?

Even the food seemed better, and we had what was probably the best meal of the trip in a small restaurant serving traditional Tuscan meat dishes, good wine, and massive cheese platter.

Burritti's Truck

Back in Florence, we had a little more time for some much needed (?) shopping before boarding the Eurostar bound for Venice. Just over a couple of hours later we were confronted with the brilliant azure waters of the Adriatic as we crossed the causeway from the mainland to the island city.

This experience caused us (not for the first time) to ponder, how is it that Italy is able to provide a fast, efficient, extremely comfortable train service where you don’t have to book 3 months in advance to secure a ticket for less than the GDP of a medium sized country?

Venice's Santa Maria Church at sunset

More sunset

Fortunately, the downside of travelling to Italy in autumn had until this point not become apparent, unfortunately it did not take long after our arrival in Venice for it to become very clear - Venice was absolutely damn freezing. Not that it was really that cold (yes we know we have to wait until February in London for that), more that given the nature of Venice you spend much of your time walking around outside (and a majority of that time lost) which gives ample opportunity for frost bite to take it’s toll.

Anyways, an untold number of superlatives could be used to describe Venice, all of them having been used many times before – romantic, intriguing, unique, all of which are very true. Although we found that there are some adjectives which could also be applied, but which are perhaps less frequently associated with Venice, crowded, smelly, foggy….

Cold
Gondolae

Although, this assessment would do Venice as a whole a disservice, as the whole concept of the place, no roads, no cars, no motorbikes (particularly important in Italy) is truly unique and as long as you don’t spend your whole time in St Marks Square or around the Rialto Bridge you can become blissfully lost in the totally deserted back streets, wandering for hours by the canals. We were fortunate to have a perfectly clear day when we arrived to do just this, getting very lost and resorting to our now tried and true solution of eating and drinking to pass the afternoon.

Unfortunately the next morning we awoke to find that the fog had rolled in and had decided to stick around for the day. Not that this made any change to our routine and we again divided our time between seeing the sights and avoiding the masses of tourists by exploring the quieter neighbourhoods.

St Mark's Square by night

Aimes surveys Venice from above

The engineer amongst us eagerly anticipated the arrival of one of the high autumn tides which are reported to now result in inundation of much of the island (although most would not consider wading through stinking canal water to be a highlight). Fortunately or unfortunately we didn’t experience any flooding, despite the raised walkways being stacked all over the place and some very wet pavement one morning perhaps alluding to so prior high water…

Of course Venice is packed with things to do other than just canals, and the highlight for us was probably the Peggy Guggenhiem collection, and we also enjoyed the magnificent view of the city from the top of the bell tower in St Marks Square.

More gondolae

Cubism

We decided against what seems to most is an obligatory gondola ride, deciding that numerous vaporetto (ferry) rides were a sufficient way to see the city from the canals. In fact, by the last day of the trip we had just about had enough of walking and spent much of the day taking the vaporetti to various far flung areas of Venice.

In keeping with the theme of this blog, it would be remiss of us to conclude our discussion of Venice without any comment on the culinary aspects of our stay. While perhaps not as memorable as some other cities, we did love the various nero di seppia (squid ink) dishes that appear in every menu. And of course the tiramasu is awesome, and the wine, and the coffee… you get the picture. We did also find a favourite café where they did amazing seafood tapas style plates, which also seemed to double as the meeting place for Venice’s alcoholic geriatrics, everyone knocking back grappa at 9 in the morning!

So after 10 days of seriously overdosing on wine, coffee, seafood, cheese, pasta and gelato it was back to London with our winter fat coming along quite nicely!