Mangiare e Beve come si deve, Italia Part II.

Day 86:
We arrived in Florence late last night – FML, Hotel Feretti, you have been good to us, but ffs, invest in an elevator. We dragged ourselves, our luggage and an extra suitcase up three flights of stairs – I feel we have earned every gelato and pizza we have consumed since then. Europe = elevator fail. We got to our room and literally passed right out.


Today we strolled around the city, walked along the river, across the Ponte Vecchio and through all the leather markets – so much cool stuff. Funny how I chose to buy two t-shirts with Fiat 500’s on them, typical. Bloody idiot. Totti how ever bought a nice new leather wallet equal to the value of my new t-shirts. Shopping fail Ela, shopping fail.


We had a really good day winding in and out of the narrow streets, taking photos and eating anything and everything – so much goodness, so little time!!!


We then came back to our hotel room and took advantage of the free wifi – getting reconnected with the world and all that. But we actually did something productive, we planned our next couple of days here, and got some blog writing done for you all to enjoy, aren’t we lovely, thinking of you all, while we are so far away!


We were interrupted by a loud and angry grumbling noise. No, not tottis bum *praises lord* - but our tummies. So it was time to head back out into reality and find some food. Soooo. We were a little early for dinner and had to wait in the piazza for the restaurant to start serving food, so we opted to listen to a busker and people watch which we waited for dinner. It wasn’t all bad – actually it was rather entertaining. Naturally there were pigeons everywhere and we contented ourselves with letting the little kids terrorise them all. Even funnier was when a little boy literally trampled a pigeon and a huge tuft of feathers exploded into the air. His face was HILARIOUS – we absolutely wet our pants laughing, Totti actually did the knee slap, I just rolled around on the ground. Little boy, 1 – Pigeon, 0. And then it just kept getting better – we have come across many interesting characters on our travels but we feel that this lady has been one of the most interesting. Clearly on crack (or some similar mind altering substance, or she was probably just crazy, anyway!) in drifts homeless/toothless/no underwear woman. She performed some interpretive dance, yelled at innocent bystanders and decided that rolling around on the grass so everyone could see up her dress would be a fabulous idea. Her bum was pointing in our direction. Enough said. We were discussing what we’d do if she came and sat next to us; Totti said she would piss bolt in the opposite direction...far.....FAR away! Entertaining. We felt we had overstayed our welcome (really we were just hungry) so we got up to leave. We had to walk past the homeless crack lady to get to our restaurant – we were hoping to escape without having to interact with her at all, but, because strange crap always happens to me, she turned around, adopted a porn star pose, pouted her lips at me and said with a wink and a kiss “Ciao Bella”. VOMIT. Totti lost her shit and thought it was the funniest thing she’s ever heard/seen. Me.....not so much. I felt dirty. I wanted to shower. Visions of toothless women with no undies invaded my dreams that night.


Day 87:


Because we are very productive individuals – our little internet session we mentioned yesterday was used to book a VESPA RIDE THROUGH TUSCANY. Yeah, you heard. So we were very excited at the prospect of hooning around the country side and seeing some cool stuff, and getting a three course meal cooked for us at the Corcini family winery .


At 9am we were taken to the scooter hire place and geared up for our little Tuscan adventure. We took in the rolling countryside and made frequent stops to take some cool photos. Our guide Andrea gave us a rundown of the Chianti region (famous wine comes from here, which we got to sample at the winery) we got to see Machiavelli’s house (for those of you who don’t know who he is, he is most famous for writing “The Prince”) and really just soaked in the atmosphere. If you ever come to Tuscany, do the vespa tour. It is an awesome day and you get to see so much. Next stop – we were taken to a local deli to try some schicciata (schiacciata just means squashed. It’s a type of flat bread) filled with creamy pecorino cheese. We also got to try some home made biscotti – so so delicious!! But of course that wasn’t enough – Totti was keen to try some of the local salami, so we politely asked our tour guide if he could order some for us. We got lucky – he came out with an entire plate full of salami deliciousness, free of charge. YEEE-YUUUHHH!!! From there we rode some more and stopped a couple of times to take some more photos, before coming to our next stop : the winery. It has a whole lot of awesome history and basically is worth a shit load of money, details, details – bring on the food and wine!!! We were given a guided tour of this stunning Tuscan Villa (just the grounds, not the actual house) – the grounds were spectacular, the property was massive. They produce wine and olive oil there. We were taken down into the cellars and shown how the wine is made and stored, as well as how they make the olive oil. Very impressive!


LUNCH TIME!!!!!! Entree: Bruschetta with some of the winery made olive oil, as well as some toasted bread with the chick pea and rosemary patte, and eggplant,Pecorino and garlic patte. YUMO!!!! And we got to sample two of the three wines produced at the winery. Lucky it’s so expensive or we really would become alcoholics!


Next on the menu – Pansanella: it’s a very rustic dish, cucumber, fresh tomatoes, onion and broken bits of Italian bread tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper. Deliciousness. Main course: Farfalline (butterfly pasta) in a simple basil and tomato sauce – ho muh gawwd. Drool. Best feed ever!


Sadly it was time to say goodbye to this amazing property and make our way through the back roads of Tuscany to our next destination. Gelateria. Yes, we ate a lot. It seems to be the thing to do here :p Needless to say it was a great finish to an awesome day. We rode back to the campsite feeling that it was all very well worth it.


We came back to the hotel and rested for a little bit. We aren’t even going to bother telling you what we did next, we’re sure you can guess. Suffice to say that we went to dinner. And more gelato. That is all.






Day 88:


We eased into the morning and did some housekeeping – this mostly included having lengthy showers and skyping our families. The plan today: Siena. We caught the train to the beautiful little city – didn’t make it very far, as usual, nature called and so we had to stop for some lunch before we dominated the town. We ended up in a very rustic and homey feeling restaurant and decided to try some of the local pasta with a classic sauce. I think it was one of the best plates of pasta we had in Italy. Respect. With a full tummy to keep us going, we made our way into the narrow streets and enjoyed strolling around. It was rather busy because the town was getting ready to host the annual Palio di Siena (the famous horse race that featured in the Bond film) – so there were colourful flags a plenty, they were getting the stands ready in the main piazza and setting up the horse track. It’s a shame we miss out on it – definitely a must see event on the to do list.


We liked looking into all the little shop windows – especially this one place where we just had to go inside. Did we mention that totti has fallen in love with Salami. We have eaten it almost every day; it is rather delicious after all. So yes, we HAD to go into this one place – there were salamis hanging from the roof, stacked in fridges, on the walls. It even said “strictly no photography” on a sign at the door, so naturally we had to go inside and sneak a photo. It was pretty impressive, literally Salami heaven! There isn’t much more to say except that Siena is such a beautiful city – one of our favourites, definitely.


Sadly we said goodbye and made our way back to Florence, where we began locking in the remaining month and a half of our travels. Soooooo, we are poor. Donations please. Feeling sorry for ourselves over the amount of money this was going to cost us, we decided that we’d try something new and book into a camp site for our next little adventure to the Cinque Terre. We have opted to use bus about to get us from country to country – definitely the most inexpensive way to travel, and we figured it would be a good chance to make some new friends too. So feeling a little more enthusiastic about the coming month and what was to come, we decided to make our way to dinner and enjoy one last night in Florence.

DAY 89:


It was once again time to pack all our gear and drag it down the four flights of steps in the direction of Santa Maria Novella train station. Our next destination awaited us – the very impressive Cinque Terre. We literally bulldozed our way through the droves of people and finally made it onto the train; at first we were stuck in the compartment between carriages, with all our luggage in a huge pile and only a dodgy pull out wall seat to perch on. It was friggan schmelting – apparently the OH&S people don’t think it’s worth installing air con in these parts of the train. So as soon as we got the chance, we just left our luggage in this little in-between compartment and sprinted to the first available seat. Ahhhhhh – air con!


As we got closer and closer into the Cinque Terre region, the views started to get more beautiful. We caught glimpses of the cliff top villages between the tunnels on the train and started to get excited about finally getting a chance to explore them all. We finally arrived at our little town: Devia Marina. It’s at the top of the region – a little out of the way, but it’s where our campsite was, so we trudged to the bus stop to catch the shuttle service to the camp site. As per usual there were a whole bunch of fellow Aussies coming to stay at the same place, it seemed we had once again made some new friends :) P.S they saved our luggage from spilling out onto the rail way because we were too busy worrying about getting good seats (typical), so we decided we’d better be nice :p


We arrived at our campsite, named La Sfinge. We quickly re named it “The Stinge”. Wow. Dingy. When we asked for our cabin key at reception, the lady looked at us with a blank look on her face and replied “You won’t need one”. Totti and I just looked at each other and cringed at the thought of what our sleeping quarters were going to look like. So we dragged our packs, and our extra heavy suit case full of souvies up the stairs.....up more stairs....through some bush.....along some gravel paths....and finally reached tent number 3. Two beds in an empty tent. That is all. We dumped our luggage and it took up all the little floor space there was. It smelt dank and dewy and there were ants all over the floor. Terrorists! So we promptly adopted the foetal position and seriously considered throwing ourselves off the next available cliff top. Lol.


We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the rest of The Stinge. We quickly located the market (salami, cheese and fruit – YUP!) and asked the reception the most vital of all questions “do you have wifi?” (sad, we know). They had earned back a little shred of our respect, clearly any place with a wifi service is a reputable institution. Except that the wifi didn’t reach the tents. FFS. So we gave up on that for the day and decided to trek to the next camp site (of course The Stinge did NOT have it’s own restaurant) so we decided to take ourselves, our new aussie friends and our severely empty tummies to the next camp site, which had better trees, a pool, and the restaurant. Crapped all over The stupid Stinge.


We opted for the cheapo 5euro bowl of pasta for dinner and retired to bed soon after – we had a big day ahead of us.


Lesson: If one wished to come to the Cinque Terre in peak season (July/August) seriously consider booking accommodation WELL in advance. The regions are so small that space is very limited and the prices sky rocket around this time. You do not want to end up at The Stinge. That is all.






DAY 90: vespa ride of cinqueterre. FML. Dinner.....then dinner again......


The Cinque Terre is 5 small towns on the cliffs edge – it’s famous for the Cinque Terre walk – a hike between the 5 towns which is about 30km....so....because we have developed a new level of laziness we decided that the walk seemed way too hard and that we should do it the Italian way and hire a vespa. We got up reasonably early and strolled down to pick up our little Italian stallion....soon to be renamed “Piece of shit scooter”. We were pretty excited about our days adventures...well we started excited!


First stop was a little town called Piazza...we kept driving....more driving....some more. OK seriously, where the fuck are the towns?! We came across Levanto – we had seen this one on our train ride yesterday. Our souls died a little when I looked at the map and told Ela “Ah, dude, this isn’t even one of the Cinque Terres”. FML. No better way to ease the pain than to eat, so we purchased some salami, bread, sundried tomatoes, cheese and oranges and headed to the beach for our breakfast/brunch/lunch snack! Yummo... It was a pretty town nevertheless – the church was striped like a zebra, there was also a cool castle. We took some photographic evidence.


So with our bums starting to regain feeling we decided to hop back on the shitty scooter and make our way to the Terra’s. Now, the scooter would have been fine had we been driving on normal straight Australian roads...oh hell no....we were trekking up and down mountains of simular style to the Clyde Mt – FFS. It was actually hell. Oncoming traffic, crazy motorcyclists, being overtaken....by cyclists, crying a little, falling off...tears...more tears! No but seriously, the hair pin turns that we encountered are probably banned back in Australia – this was extreme Vespering.


We finally made it to the first town – Monterosso. It was a cute little town with a beach. We contemplated going for a swim until we realised we didn’t have a towel, so we concluded that ice cream was a much safer option. We explored the streets and took some awesome photos before heading to the next town – Vernazza. Similar to Monterosso – this little town is surrounded by grapevines on cliffs with great views of the water. The towns are quite similar in terms of architecture – yellow, red and orange pastel apartments on cliffs, small streets, big hills... very pretty scenery.


We bypassed Corniglia – well we waved to it on our shitty scooter but decided if we had any chance on conquering these 5 terres, one had to miss out! On the way to Monorola – now known as Motorola we had to head up the hill from Vernazza. As we were approaching our 500th hair pin turn for the day, the scooter decided it was over being driven and toppled over – leaving us running and embarrassed on the road as other tourists drove past us and laughed. Hmm...so we continued. On the way down to Motorola, the shitty scooter decided that it didn’t want to brake anymore. The front brakes just stopped working so we went flying down the hill, brakeless, trying to manoeuvre around the corners...there were screams – don’t judge us, we were scared!


Last stop: Motorola. Yes, we know, we didn’t conquer all the terres, but it was getting late and we were hungry. Motorola was by far our favourite little terra. It had a lot more character, awesome little food shops with gelato, biscotti etc and there were cute little grandma and grandpa’s on almost every balcony watching the world go by. We demolished some vegetarian pasta and grilled calamari – belissimo! We treated ourselves to some gelato as we knew the ride home was going to be torture.


After what seemed like for ever, Ela had blistered hands from driving all day, coupled with frost bite and bugs hitting us at high speeds, we were more than elated when we saw the sign for the Stinge (2km to go!!!) one problem; on comes the fuel light. FFS nothing could go right that day. We did make it back to camp safe and sound, and we gave the scooter a swift kick in the wheels and bade it good night. With numb backsides, hungry bellies and cold noses, we trudged stiff backed to our tents and whinged about how cold, hungry and in pain we were. Wah. Sooky la la. Anyway – we got over it pretty quickly as we always do with the prospect of food on the horizon, so we made our way to dinner with the rest of the aussie crew.


DAY 91:


Today was just going to be one of those days. I left Totti to sleep in, as the Vespa had to be returned to the shop by 8.30am. With the hope in mind that I would be back at camp in no time, I made my way down to the parked scooter and hopped on.......splutter......cough.....wheeze. Maybe it’s just cold. Try again. Cough.....gutter....splutter....wheeze......Third time lucky? No joy. PUSHED STUPID VESPA ALL THE EFFING WAY TO THE SERVO, THEN BACK TO THE SHOP BECAUSE IT STILL WOULDNT START, EVEN ON A FULL TANK. So. Much. Hate. I was fuming at the thought of Totti snoring away, none the wiser to my little calamity. I made a point of walking very slowly and casually back to camp.


I’m glad Totti laughed when I broke the news of my little adventure. In hindsight, the thought of my trudging 4 k’s down the road pushing a motor vehicle while wearing a Vespa helmet is pretty funny. Sweating my face off looking like I would poke your eyes out if you so much as tried to speak to me because I was so pissed off at my current luck, or lack thereof.


I soon got over it and we got ready to catch the train to Portfino – a little town north of the La Spezia/Cinque Terre region. A quick train ride to Saint Margherita, we then jumped on a jam packed bus full of annoying Italians. FML. Sweaty, stinky, loud people = frustration. But we finally got to Portfino and were released from the bus. Portfino is a town which has a port (go figure!). It’s similar society status to Monaco in France – massive boats, expensive shops and rich people everywhere. We decided we needed to eat – so we got some bread, cheese and salami (4 euro for everything – I thank you!) and sat by the port and munged on our food. Even the rich people had food envy of us – we know where it’s at when it comes to food. We took some photos and strolled around the town before deciding it was time for some biscotti – yummo. We caught the bus, then the train back to The Stinge. A short lived adventure but at least we can say we went and saw it. Woo.


It seemed that while we were away, a mutant wasp had decided to take refuge in out tent. WHHYYYY-YUUUUHHHH!!! FML. Totti took off and waited about ten metres away from the tent while I hurled her thongs.....my thongs.....my converse.....her converse, at this fist size Godzilla wasp. After about 20 minutes of me dashing in and out of the tent retrieving all our shoes and trying again to hit the wasp, it FINALLY drifted out of our tent and out into the wilderness where it belonged. We joked that it was going to get it’s posse of killer was mates and return with a full squadron ready to sting our faces off.


It was now time to relax, do some washing and bum around. We went into town with the others and enjoyed another plate of deliciousness, followed by a gelato. Once back at camp we played a couple of rounds of cards before retiring to our tent for the night. It was cloudy and overcast, and looked like it might possibly rain.


Oh, and rain it did. Mother nature had a fit of rage that night. Bucket loads upon bucket loads of rain, definitely gave “raining cats and dogs” an entirely new meaning. Because our campsite was perched on top of a mountain we were privy to the cracks of thunder that literally vibrated our tent because they were so loud, and the lightning strikes came more and more frequently as the rain poured on and on into the early hours of the morning. I think this lasted for about 4 hrs in total, our tent was frequently illuminated by the lightning and the camp lights flickered on and off. Black out! The storm would have been ok, had I not needed to wee for the entire duration of it. There was no way I was going to step outside into that storm. Knowing my luck, and judging on the previous events of the day, probability that I would have stacked it in the mud, or gotten struck by lightning were fairly high. So I decided to hold.


At around 5am or so the storm was in full swing and very loud. Totti emerged from her pile of blankets, hair on end, reeled off a turbo charged exclamation of how very impressive this storm was. Did she mention how big it was?! And how loud...and did I see that lightning!! And OH MY GOD, its PISSING DOWN RAIN!!! I did not get a chance to get a word in before she ran out of words to describe the storm, and literally hit the pillow and was silent once more. I had a giggle and made a mental note to recount this little early morning conversation later on.


Day 92:


Today we decided we’d back track it a little and make our way down to Pisa as we didn’t get a chance to see the leaning tower while we were in Florence. You really only do go to Pisa to see the leaning tower – besides that, there really is nothing to see. We laughed at the countless people all standing in a row, taking the exact same photograph: lets put our hands out and try and make it look like we are stopping the town from falling over. Because we are really cool, we decided to photo bomb the shit out of people, and imitate them taking their masterpiece photos. We got a really good shot of Totti photobombing some Asians. It’s classic. We shall put this one up on photobucket, watch that space.


So yes, the tower does really lean. You can do Pisa is literally 20 minutes. We stopped in Riomaggiore and did the famous ‘Lover’s walk’ to Monorola – it’s a path built into the cliff, roughly an 800 metre stroll between the two towns. Wicked views and lots of “I love you” messages written along the walk. They have also hung locks along the fences and carved their names into cactuses. Very cute. Once in Monorola we enjoyed our very last Italian dinner – Totti had spaghetti with Muscles and I just had a plate of veggo spaghetti.


Once back at the Stinge we just lounged around and wrote some blog. Italy has been fun – we are actually excited to be eating something other than Pizza and Pasta for a change. As lovely and delicious as it has been, after three weeks of this, our stomachs are ready to dominate some other delicacies that Europe has to offer.


So we say Ciao Bella to the boot shaped land and prepare to take on Spain next – Ole!


Arrivederci and say hi to your dad for us.


Baci,


Kate & Ela xxx