Long Day...

Now I'll blog about the longest day of the whole adventure. We got up at 5:30 on Aug 25 to catch the 6:07 train to Monterosso (the fifth village in Cinque Terre, north of Vernazza). We waited in Monterosso until 6:55 to catch the train from Monterosso to Genoa. Upon arriving in Genoa at 8:20, we picked up some breakfast in the train station before catching a train to Ventimiglia (silent g in Ventimiglia) at 8:45. We arrived in Ventimiglia just after 11 am and waited for our next train to leave Ventimiglia for Montecarlo (in France) at 11:31. We arrived in Montecarlo at noon and jumped off one train onto another (fortunately on the next platform), this time heading for Nice, pm. at 12:08. We arrived in Nice finally at 12:36, where we wandered around the harbourfront watching parachutists fly into the air behind a boat. Then we meandered back through the Old Town, where we picked up lunch at a little cafe. We saw lots of palm trees and sand in Nice. After two-and-a-half hours, there we headed back towards the train station for our 4:28 train ride to Marseille. We arrived in Marseille around 7 pm where we needed to wait for our 8:45 departure to Avignon. I sat with the luggage, while Karen got up and took pictures around the station and surrounding vicinity. We got to Avignon at 10:15 pm rather tired. We found our hotel at 10:25, but the hotel had no record of our reservation...so we got the smallest, least desirable room in the place--or maybe they were all that bad...I don't know. It was a hot, airless room with only a small fan, and the bed wasn't a proper double. You get what you pay for!

Cinque Terre

We left Rome at 2:10 pm for La Spezia, just south of the Cinque Terre. If you can't find it, find Genoa and then follow the coast slightly southeast. We arrived in La Spezia at 6:30 pm. We tried to reserve our next train from Cinque Terre to Nice but had a poor experience with a ticket agent who spoke no English and refused to show us his computer screen or write anything legible. We arrived in Vernazza in 7:30.

Vernazza is one of five villages perched on these cliffs overlooking the Ligurian Sea. Coming from the south (La Spezia), they are in order: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. The train went under the mountain for much of the time, but every so often you'd come out along the coast and see beautiful sparkling water with mountains in the background. My first impression of Vernazza (after getting out of the tunnel into which we stepped...there's a very short platform in Vernazza) was that it was a hive of activity. We saw tall, narrow houses all stacked together very compactly. Tourists in bathing suits mingled with locals at cafes...though the former seemed to be the larger group.

We stayed at Martina's Rooms. There were 5 flights of stairs to climb, but we had a nice view from the top, as our room looked out on the square just down by the harbour. We had dinner at a restaurant just below our room. Karen had pesto pasta (pesto originated here)while I had baked anchovies (another local specialty). During our dinner, Karen took a video of a man playing panpipes as he beat his drum with a shaker and marched around the square.

The next morning, I got up just before 8 and headed out to do a couple loads of laundry. After finishing that and getting some breakfast, we headed out to Monterosso around 11 for a hike through the five villages that make up Cinque Terre. We had been advised by a travel book to hike from Monterosso to Riomaggiore in order to do the hardest part of the hike first. It was a long, steep, strenuous climb toward Vernazza. We stopped for lunch and a swim in Vernazza. Vernazza to Corniglia was also quite steep, with lots of narrow mountain paths which made passing others difficult. We stopped for gelato in Corniglia and then carried on towards Manarola, which proved to be a much easier hike. The walk from Manarola to Riomaggiore was on the Via Dell'amore, or Path of Love. This paved, level path had been forged between the two villages in the 1920s to facilitate the meeting and marrying of young people between them. It's easy to see how isolated the villages would have been before the train was built linking them. Anyway, this part of the hike was MUCH easier. In Karen's words, "This isn't even a hike anymore." We had hoped to take the boat back to Vernazza, but we were too late by more than an hour, so we hopped on the train back to Vernazza. We shared a large pesto pizza for dinner, down by the water on the rocks. Note: In Italy you have to pay to sit down in a restaurant, so it's cheaper if you buy takeout and then find your own (free) "chair" elsewhere. After dinner, we wandered into a little shop and bought some limoncino (an alcoholic lemon drink that is from the area) and some liqueur chocolates.

The next day, we started with a delicious breakfast at Il Pirato restaurant, found by walking up the hill past the train station to the very top of the town. I had a strawberry slushie with a vanilla-filled pastry garnished with strawberries, while Karen had a very thick hot chocolate with whipped cream on the side, and a chocolate pastry. We were well-impressed with both the food and the friendliness of the Sicilian twins who run the place and resolved to return for dinner.

We took the boat to Manarola to see the olive press museum, only to find out that it was closed. It is only open for a few months in the fall at harvest time. So we thought we would take the boat to Monterosso and spend some time at the beach...only it's now 12:40 and the boat doesn't come again until 2:55. So we thought, what the heck, we'll hang out at the beach at Manarola (which is rocky rather than sandy) for a few hours. There were some young people (mostly young men) who were jumping or diving off some very tall rocks into the water near the shore. As far as we know, no one was paralyzed by so doing, though it's not something I would remotely consider doing. Karen did some sunbathing on the rocks and swimming, while I read a novel for awhile.

We eventually got to Monterosso, where we found out it cost 15 euros to make use of two beach chairs and an umbrella at the beach (it turned out it was a private beach and even to use it at all cost 15 euros). So we spent a few hours there, and then I went to an internet cafe while Karen stayed at the beach a bit longer. We took the train back to Vernazza and went to Il Pirato where I had pesto lasagna and Karen had pesto gnocchi for diner. I also ordered another strawberry slushie--they were SO GOOD! We met a Canadian couple who were holidaying there on his leave from duty in Kandahar and chatted with them for the evening, finishing off with a fruit pana cotta (like creme brulee with fruit) we shared. Divine...

Rome

So on August 20, we packed our bags and headed out after breakfast to Ferrovia (the train station) on foot to catch our 10:30 train. We arrived at 2 pm in Rome, where we immediately reserved our next train and bought a Roma Pass (good for three days travel and free entrance to two museums--without standing in line--and with discounts at other musuems).

On getting out into the sunshine, we were blasted with muggy 35 degree heat. We made our way to our hostel--Colours--on foot. It was a beautiful spot, with kitchen set up for use as well as one computer terminal free for use. Our room included a fairly spacious shower, TV, safe, fridge (complete with about six different beverage choices) and air conditioning. We refreshed ourselves a bit...I had tiramisu gelato--the best gelato of the entire trip...and then headed to the Vatican. We saw the beautiful Basilica San Pietro. The altar at the front was rather forbidding....an underlighted black structure that didn't seem all that worshipful to me. The rest of the church was gorgeous though. To get in, I had to get rid of my Swiss Army knife that I had foolishly kept in my fanny pack. I hid it in an empty garbage can in the hopes of finding it upon return...I never did. Live and learn. We had hoped to see the Vatican Musuems (Sistine Chapel) that day too, but by the time we arrived (at 6:30), it was too late as last entrances were at 4 pm.

So we walked to Campo di Fiori for dinner. Karen's guidebook had given us several ideas of places to go eat...one was closed and another we never found. We found out that during the month of August, many Romans escape the oppressive heat and humidity of Rome and close up shop for several weeks while on vacation. We finally found a nice place to get drinks and aperatifs for 8 euros. They had little paper trays filled with little nibbles...cheese and jam, BBQ veggies on a skewer, rice salad, pasta salad, cucumber/feta/olive, tomato/feta/basil, fruit salad on a skewer...best value dinner we ever had.

After dinner, we walked past the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument, built to honour the first king of a united Italy in the nineteenth century, on our way to the Trevi Fountain a gorgeous fountain that is always crowded with tourists. Neptune is pictured at the front and the side statues represent the health and abundance that water has always given Rome. By 9:30 pm, I was dead on my feet from the heat. To bed in our air conditioned room...

The next day, we had a breakfast of filled croissants, pastries, cereal, yogurt and toast before heading off to the Colosseum around 10. It was interesting to stand in the amphitheatre and imagine the games that took place there some 1500-2000 years ago. They had exhibits about the different types of gladiators: the retiarius is the only one I can remember, who was armed with a net and a trident (a three-pronged spear).

We grabbed lunch outside the Colosseum around 1 pm (panini) before proceeding on to the Roman Forum. The Roman Forum is the ruins of Ancient Rome and includes temples to the various gods, and other buildings that have survived. It was incredibly hot walking through the (unshaded) remains and we were glad to have brought water and iced tea with us. We also wanted to get to the Vatican Museums before 4 pm. I enjoyed seeing all the paintings on the ceilings in the galleries. We got into the Sistine Chapel--which was nice to see, after having completed a jigsaw of it several years ago, a s well as the Pinacoteca (art gallery).

We went out for dinner to a place we found near our hostel: Pizzeria Napoli2. I had pizza with mozzerella cheese, smoked salmon, rocket lettuce, and sweet corn on it. Karen had pasta la carbonara: with ham, egg, and cheese...very salty, but good. Then back to our hostel for the night.

The next morning, we were up at 8 am and after breakfast, set off for the Spanish Steps, the longest and widest staircase in Europe, built in the 18th century with bequest funds from a French diplomat. We got some pictures there, and appreciated some of the beautiful paintings on display by various artists...I think Karen bought one, if I recall correctly. Then we walked to the Trevi Fountain again, because I wanted to get some good pictures in daylight as my camera doesn't take very good night pictures. We stopped at the San Loyola church for a few minutes and then carried on toward the Pantheon. The Pantheon has a large hole in the centre of the roof, but the floor is sloped slightly towards the edges so that any rain that comes in drains away at the edges. When we visited, it was under renovation, so there was lots of scaffolding on the outside of the building. We had gelato in Piazza Novona before returning to our hostel. Karen's raspberry was better than my mint.

Venice

We left Signau on the 7:14 train towards Bern on Aug 17, then transferred at 8:07 to a train towards Brigg (arriving 9:11) and then finally from Brigg to Venice (9:44-3:00 pm). There was lots of cloud on the mountains as we were leaving Switzerland.

We arrived in Venice and eventually found our hotel in spite of the poor directions we received, with some help from several locals. Neither of us was really prepared for the tiny little alleyways we saw there. There is a carpark for cars on the mainland, and then you get around on foot or by boat from there. Roads there seemed to change name or direction (or both) every 200 metres or so.

We freshened up and then walked to San Toma piazza for dinner. (San Toma was incidentally our closest vaporetto--boat--stop as well.) I had a delicious vegetable bruschetta (which looked like a pizza) and iced tea for dinner. The pigeons were all swarming around...they get fed a LOT in Venice. Two dogs chased each other around the square completely unleashed. Later that evening, we took the vaporetto to San Rialto and walked around the market on the bridge, as well as at the base of the bridge. Then we decided to just get on the vaporetto and cruise around. We went to Lido, one of the outer islands in Venice and just enjoyed seeing the buildings on the shore as the breeze gently blew through our hair. It had been quite hot during the day but it felt lovely sitting on the boat at 10 pm.

The next morning, we slept in until 8 am when the clock chimed 40 times. Other morning sounds included hearing people talking, a child crying and the garbage collectors rolling their carts by on the street below. After a breakfast of pastries and buns and fruit and tea/hot chocolate, we headed to San Marco piazza. We checked out the Basilica and then after taking note of the record number of pigeons in the piazza, we walked to the Ponte dei Sospiri. (Unfortunately, Coke had covered it in Coke advertisements.) Lord Byron apparently started a legend (untrue)in the 19th century that the bridge was the last sight that prisoners had of Venice before they were prisoned in the adjoining prison cells or executed. More recently it has generated stories that if a couple kisses underneath it, their love will endure forever. For more about the Bridge of Sighs, see here:

http://europeforvisitors.com/venice/articles/bridge_of_sighs.htm

Then we took the vaporetto to Isola (Island) di San Giorgio Maggiore to see the church there, and to go up the campanile (bell tower) for lovely views of Venice. Back at San Marco, we each picked up some bright watercolour paintings of Venice (Rialto bridge, San Marco). Following lunch at a pizzeria, we took the vaporetto to San Elena Island to walk around. We walked through a lovely park filled with weirdly-shaped trees, watched a badly-behaved dog and his equally badly-behaved owner when her dog attacked a leashed one. We found lots of canals with laundry hanging on lines stretched over the canals. When we were heading home, we got on the wrong boat and ended up at Port teRoma, the only place where buses and cars exist in Venice. It was a weird feeling seeing them, after not seeing a single one in two days.

On our third day in Venice, we took the vaporetto back to Port te Roma to mail the large posters we bought back home. Then we took another boat to Fondamente te Novo, from which we caught the no. 12 to Burano, a smaller island in Venice. Burano was filled with amazingly brightly-coloured houses in purples, greens, blues, reds, with contrasting shutters (e.g. an orange house with turquoise shutters). We looked at the lace goods for which Burano is famous and bought a few postcards.

Upon returning from Burano, we took a gondola ride through the narrow canals of Venice, past the house that Marco Polo lived in (he was born in 1294), past the oldest palace in Venice (1591). We went to Canareggio for dinner where we had a good conversation with a Venetian family. Then we went to an internet cafe for a bit before bed.

Signau

So after leaving Bern, we had a lovely train ride to Signau. Signau was the most rural place we visited in our trip, and we went there to visit our friend Lydie and her husband Christof. Lydie and Christof were expecting their firstborn right around the date of our arrival...in spite of this, Lydie insisted that we should come. From Bern we had called to let them know when we were coming in, and discovered that they had had a daughter, Kezia just three days earlier. Lydie was still recovering from surgery in the hospital, but Christof would come and pick us up. So we met Christof at the train station around 8:15 pm. He had been an IVEPer in the States at the same time Lydie was in Stouffville, but we had never met him before. He took us out to their dairy farm, climbing winding hilly roads to get there. The house is three stories, with his parents living on the top floor, a tenant in the middle floor, and Christof and Lydie on the ground floor. There is also a barn for the pigs attached at the back of the house, and a larger barn for the cows behind the house. So we had a good evening of getting to know Christof and seeing their home. We also discovered that Lydie had left chocolate, a Swiss pencil and some literature about the area and about Alsace Lorraine (where she's from) for each of us on our beds. A very gracious hostess indeed!

The next morning, Karen got up at 5 to help with the milking. (She also saw two pigs being bred.) After breakfast, Christof took us to the factory where his milk is turned into cheese. Apparently they have a cooperative of about 20 farmers who own this cheese factory and contribute milk to it daily...all of the milk in this community goes into cheese. We saw the huge vat into which they pour 4600 L of milk to begin the process, and then the smaller tanks into which the heated milk is fed via overhead pipes where they eliminate some of the excess fluid (don't ask me how). Then these same tanks were turned upside down and press to get more liquid out. We were told that the next morning, they would be taken out of these smaller tanks and wrapped in wax to sit for 6 months before they are taken to the stores. 1000 L of milk makes one large round of cheese. They had one smaller container as well holding less and a softer kind of cheese. I watched one of the employees take the cheese out of the tank, cut it in half (two shallower rounds, not two semi-circles) with a wire and then press it back into the frame.

After this, we had some time to relax at the house before lunch...Karen napped, and I did some blogging. Once lunch was finished, we headed into the hospital to visit Lydie and Kezia. Lydie had had an emergency C-section the previous Friday (a week overdue) because they couldn't find the baby's heartbeat. However, mom and baby were doing well, if a bit sore yet for Lydie. She was expecting to be in the hospital for another two or three days yet.

Karen and Christof went out to milk cows again at 5, while I took a brief walk outside, trying to capture some of the gorgeous scenery and chalets. For dinner back at the house, we had a simple dinner of bread, salad and Emmental cheese...yes, the same kind of cheese we had watched being made that morning with Christof's milk. Christof made a fire in the wood stove in both the morning and evening that day to take the chill out of the air and help dry our clothes (we had done laundry there)--definitely our coldest weather for the entire trip. It was nice to stand by a wood fire again after being away from it for a year.

Bern

So Bern was almost a month ago by now...relying on my diary to remind me what we did! We left our hostel in Zurich around 8 am after Karen bought a Swiss Army knife (they were selling them at the hostel). We took the train into Bern, arriving late morning. After leaving our luggage in lockers at the train station, we wandered around the Zyglotte (parliament) and clock tower. Following lunch in a local cafe, we went to Einsteinhaus, the place where Einstein lived and worked from 1903-1905. The house has been restored to the style of that period, with various articles, such as the table that Einstein stood at to write, on display. Finally, we walked across the Aare River to get to the Bärenpark, a 6000 metre sq. park with small and large bear pits that has housed bears for several hundred years--since 1513. The brown bears have a long narrow swath down near the river to move about in. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant and then returned to the train station where we picked up our luggage and caught our next train.

Here's a site for the Bear Park we visited. http://www.baerenpark-bern.ch/index.php?id=info&L=0

Zurich

I should really have my diary here to remind me of Zurich as it was now so long ago (nearly two weeks) that it is not so fresh as my more recent experiences. Anyway, I am in an internet cafe and must make use of the time I have, so here goes.

We left Ingolstadt early in the morning, dragging Imke and Martin out of bed at 5 am to get us to the train station on time. We took the train into Zurich, arriving late-morning. We found our hostel without difficulty and set out to explore the city. First, we sat down to enjoy a lunch of bread and cheese fondue near our hostel. There was a big parade happening in Zurich that day, an energy festival that we happened to coincide with. There were flyers all over the sidewalks, and people were in high spirits everywhere we went. There were also lots of unusually dressed people for the freak show happening that afternoon. We crossed the river and headed back toward the older section of town. We saw the Grossmunster, where Ulrich Zwingli began preaching in 1519, and located a store that Karen´s book had mentioned for its tiny little ¨burgers¨--little candies in the shape of a burger. It was closed, but we got a few photos. Then it started raining. We headed back towards the train station, where we visited the Swiss National Museum, and then decided to go up the mountain on a small train. It was only a 20 minute ride and would have been even more beautiful if it hadn´t been overshadowed by pouring rain. Karen walked around outside snapping shots in the rain like a trooper, while I got a few shots and then headed into shelter indoors to wait out the rain at the only restaurant on the mountain.

On the way back home, we saw hordes of young people huddled in clusters on the floor of the train station, sheltering from the rain. The station was packed! Apparently they didn´t have much in the way of indoor venues for people to stay in for this event. In spite of the rain, it was still quite noisy below our window. I used the earplugs the hostel gave me and slept through it all quite fine.