Em was here from Saturday, 3 October, until this past Monday. It was nice to have family here again... that has honestly been the hardest part about being here. I'm used to being far from home, but "hop on a plane for a weekend to see Mom & Dad" far, not "really expensive ticket plus 8 hour flight plus 6 hour time difference" far. So, spending time with family is really nice. :)
The day after Em got in, she was a very courageous girl - I had borrowed a bike for her, and she and I biked all around the city! I think it's great to see the city like a local, but Em had other thoughts... anyways, we made it home safely and with only a few minor scares. :)
Em with the bikes... brave girl! :)
While I worked on Monday, and Tuesday, Em explored Amsterdam on her own, doing the mandatory tourist things like the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House. When I got home, it was kind of nice to do "normal" things together, like baking cookies! :) I miss doing that stuff!
One batch of cookies into my mini oven-microwave thingy!
On Wednesday, I was officially on vacation, and Em and I flew to Pisa, then took the train to Florence. We stayed there for one night, and went to some of the museums that neither one of us had had a chance to see on former trips to Florence. We didn't over-do the sight-seeing, and really just had a nice time. We also spent WAY too much time and money at the market, but it is just so hard to resist... :) We began our journey to the Cinque Terre in the afternoon on Thursday - train from Florence to La Spezia (about 2 hours), then another train from La Spezia to Corniglia, the cute little town of 240 that we stayed in while we were there! :)
Pit-wolfs on the Ponte Vecchio
Yes, here comes the food! We had a nice pizza (and wine!) lunch at an amazing restaurant in Florence - One of my faves! :)
We got our exercise that day by climbing to the top of the Duomo
The Cinque Terre region created pesto, so we were both really anxious to get to try the real deal... the first night, we went to a restaurant which basically only served a few things - for an appetizer, you choose land or sea, and for pasta, you pick pesto pretty much! It was fun to interact with the guy running the shop - he definitely had an idea about how food was to be eaten, and didn't let us stray from the "proper" way! I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head when I ordered red wine with seafood - he refused to serve it, because WHITE wine goes with seafood! What do I know?? (well, actually, I know that white wine gives me a headache, but que sera, sera, I got the white anyways!)
Pesto with a special kind of pasta from the region that is made so pesto sticks better
After loading up on pasta, we called it a night - we had a long day of hiking ahead of us! Basically, the Cinque Terre is a group of 5 small towns (Cinque Terre means "5 Lands" in Italian), that you can hike to on a trail that runs between. Em and I stayed in the middle town, Corniglia, and hiked one direction one day and the other direction the next. It was a good plan. :) The hike on the first day was pretty strenuous - we felt like we had climbed a few mountains. At the end of the hike, we were estimating how long we had hiked. My guess was about 12 miles - and I really thought so! When we looked it up, it turned out we had hiked less than 5 - it was just THAT HARD. Oh boy! It was amazingly beautiful though, and I loved every minute of it. :)
Our first view of the town right after ours, Vernazza, after about 2 hours of hiking. This was my favorite town - the colors were amazing, and it was great to be on the water! :)
After lunch in Vernazza, we hiked to the next town, Monterosso... on the way there, we started hearing thunder, so we hiked a little faster! Luckily, we just had a few raindrops, nothing serious, so that was nice. When we finally got to the town, it started raining a little, so we just passed the time with gelato (hey, there is no bad time for gelato!). :)
Monterosso
This is pretty much what the hiking was like - a real butt-kicker!
The Cinque Terre's main cash crop is wine grapes, and each town has their own kind of white wine. At one place in Monterosso, there was a place where you could do a sampling of wine from each town, so we did! :)
The Before picture... I am not posting the after! ;)
This is the town of Corniglia, where we stayed, and this was the nice view from our room. We had kind of a crappy room in Florence, so this was so refreshing. We loved the town - the people were so nice and friendly - we really felt like part of the fold there. No one spoke English, but we got by with bits and pieces of Italian and Spanish. :)
Corniglia: Population, 240 (plus 2 Pit-wolfs!)
The next day (after being fueled by a nice dinner at one of the other restaurants in Corniglia - there are 3), we hiked the other direction. These hikes were much less strenuous, which was good, because we were both sore from the day before! :)
Manarola
There is a cute trail between the two last cities, Manarola and Riomaggiore, called the Via del Amore, or Street of Love... it's named that because in the old days, men and women from the two towns would marry between villages, and they would meet here. It was cute! :)
Via del Amore
Riomaggiore
We took a neat walk in Riomaggiore to see the grapes - it was beautiful up there!
Wine grapes
We are DONE! We took the train back after walking back to Manarola for lunch! :)
I think I've mentioned that something is ALWAYS on strike in Italy... and this time it was the trains (again!) on Saturday and Sunday. We were really nervous that we weren't going to be able to get back to Pisa, so we decided to change the plan and take the train to Pisa before the strike started on Saturday evening. We were sad to leave beautiful Corniglia, but happy that we wouldn't be stuck! :)
We really lucked out with a hotel - this was our view:
Yep, that's the leaning tower of Pisa - how freaking cool! I couldn't stop looking at it!
Em with our crostini at dinner - our last dinner in Italy - sigh...
We spent Sunday in Pisa, and of course had to get the obligatory picture holding the Leaning Tower up... however, I don't think the elderly woman we asked to take our picture got that concept! Oh well, I think this is kind of funny:
Pisa is honestly not my favorite Italian city, but parts of it are quite beautiful, and we had a great day:
Our flight got delayed a few hours on the way back due to weather (and, oh, is it just LOVELY in Amsterdam now), so we didn't get back until about 10pm. Em's flight out the next morning was at 8am, so we didn't get much sleep!
It was really great to have Em here, and I'm glad she got to see where I live. Looking forward to more family time very soon - Mom & Dad come in November for Thanksgiving, Dutch-style! :)
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