Au Revoir France, Ciao Italy (Cinque Terre)
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2007
1
14
23
Trip End
Oct 26, 2007
La Spezia,
Italy
Monday, September 24, 2007
The freeways do have speed limits between 110km/h and 130km/h, but we saw a lot of cars speeding way past the limit. We got to see what the Rolls Royces, Bentleys, 5 Series Beamers are really made for, and at least 80% of the cars flashing their high beams at us to move out of their way were one of these cars.
Arriving at the toll gates near La Spezia, we paid a 24 euro toll! Fair enough, we did cross a border, but we weren't expecting it to be that much
Calzone
. Driving into La Spezia from the freeway, the place looked very similar to Port Botany (our hotel was located very close to the Port). We checked into our hotel, went for a walk around the port and headed for the tourist office to grab a map of La Spezia and the Cinque Terre. The lady at the tourist office told us La Spezia was a very small place; she then pointed us to the city centre, which was another 10 minute walk.
Once we reached the city centre our view on La Spezia, it was what we expected a city like Milan would be like, preppy dressed teens, women and men dressed in designer labels. Every bloke over the age of 30 wore tailored pants (colours included peach, pink, some striped), a long sleeved button shirt and the sweater tied around their neck. Belinda and I on the other hand had shorts, shirt and thongs on.
After seeing how everyone was dressed, we decided to head back to the hotel and change into shoes, jeans and a decent top for dinner.
September 23, 2007 - Cinque Terre
After checking out Sean's blog whilst he was on his EU trip and seeing the pictures of the Cinque Terre, Belinda and I had to put it into our itinerary. Sean's entry of the Cinque Terre mentioned that he did the coastal walk along the Cinque Terre National Park and said the walk was "challenging".
We kicked off the walk at around 8:30am to coastel walk to the five villages (Riomaggriore, Manorola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso) and checkout the stunning views
Tiramisu
. Starting at Riomaggriore and ending at Monterosso, the walk took us five hours, 10km in total and it was a fairly warm day. Belinda and I were goooone, due to the steep hills we walked up and down, and couldn't wait for the end goal, the beach at Monterosso. When we finally reached Monterosso, the first thing we did was dunked ourselves into the water to cool down. The water was phenomenal, its probably how the Greek Islands would be (never been there). We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out on the beach, downing cocktails as a reward to ourselves for the long walk we had just endured.
Marrying into an Italian family, I had high expectations of the food we were going to eat whilst in Italy, after all the home cooked meals I've had with Belinda's family. The food in La Spezia didn't disappoint! I had the best of everything, and cant wait for the rest of the food coming to us. Had the best tiramisu and cannoli I've ever had, great gelato, pizza, calzone, red wine, fizzy red wine........and so on!
Comments
RELAXATION !!
Now that sounds like relaxing shit!!! Walking ain't relaxing, lol