Italy--what a wonderful place!

Cinque Terre

 Five fishing villages on the coastline of Italy decided to get together and organize an association between the towns for tourists to come and hike, boat and enjoy the views. We decided to stop in this area as we crossed Italy as people have told us it was one of their favourite parts of Italy.  Boy were they right!

We stayed two days in Riomaggorie in an apartment.  We stayed in an apartment which was fun as the roads of the town were steep, as the towns are all built on the side of the mountain, and we had to climb up incredibly steep steps inside the building to get to our room. Ang was lucky enough that she could squeak right under the low ceiling in the stairwell.

There is a pathway along the water that allows people to walk between the five towns. The train lines also connect the five towns.  The travel time on the train between villages is two to five minutes with a total distance of 10km between the two ends of the towns  making the travel time between the towns a quick trip.

We were going to walk from Riomaggorie to the other towns along the water, but the trails linking the towns on the waterfront pathway were all closed. We were not sure if this was due to poor conditions or maybe just trying to protect the path for later in the high tourist season. We walked along the path to the town next to ours, Manarola, which was only a quite 20 minute walk along a very nice path--looking right out over the ocean!  We then had to take a train to get to the next village because the path was closed, so we took the train all the way to the end (Monterosso) and started our walk back to Riomaggiore.

The walk between Montorosso and Vernazza was two hours up and down the hillside with some great view of the water and the villages. The walks were fairly easy, but we saw some people walking in slippers and moccasins which would make the trip a little more difficult. We saw one sign at one end of the trails that had a picture of a high heeled shoe with a slash through it, which means people must try to hike in stilettos. 

We took the train back to Riomaggorie as the weather changed from bad to worse and decided to enjoy some more excellent Italian cooking.  We are really enjoying the thin crust pizza and desserts. One of the great desserts we had was chocolate filled focaccia, which was excellent.  Sampling the red wines with every meal is another fantastic part of time in Italy we have enjoyed.

We didn't get the best weather in Cinque Terre, but did still really enjoy these little villages.  We will be back when there is more sunshine!!

View overlooking Manarola, the second town on the coast.  Look at how packed all the houses are--all the space is used!  Then they have a nice area for gardening on the other side.

Pic taken as we are walking the oceanfront path outside of Manarola.  Beautiful views!

This is a pic of our street.  Hard to appreciate the incline of the hill, but boy did you feel it walking up!

Pic taken from the waterfront path at the other end of the trail, outside of Monterosso.

View from above, as we are hiking from Monterosso to Vernazza.  You get some very nice views of the coastline from up there!

Venice

We had planned to travel to Venice from Riomaggoire on the Sunday that the Italian train services decided to have a one day workers strike. The strike was not a full cancellation of services but most of the trains were cancelled allowing travelers to get to where they wanted to go with less flexibility.

Our original train plan was to travel from Riomaggorie to Pisa, Florence and north to reach Venice.  With the strike mandated train schedule, we had to backtrack to Genoa, travel north to Milan and then east to Venice. In the end the revised route was fantastic as the view from Genoa to Venice was better than expected. The best part was the ride between Milan to Venice featured views of the Italian Alps to the north beyond the towns situated on the rolling mountains. It made for a pleasant trip considering the extra hassle and potential unexpected problems we may have faced, the trip worked out alright.

The train into Venice was different as no cars used in the main part of Venice. The train station is located at the western end of the main island of Venice, which means travelers can get to the island with public transportation.

We decided to stay at a hotel on the island of Lido, located to the west of the main island.  The transport system is Venice is excellent and since there are no cars or buses allowed, its all by boat!  They are called vaporettes and they run everywhere around the city, all the time.  It is quite fun to hope on a boat and explore the island from one end to the next.

Walking around the town and trying not to get to lost in the side streets was enjoyable, as simple as that seems.  The city is very beautiful and even though we had seen many pictures of Venice and heard how different it is from other cities, we were really impressed with it. We think it’s a city that every person should visit when travelling to Italy as it is a great place.  It is very busy with travelers in the main parts of the city even during the end of April. We could not imagine what a congested place the city must be during the summer months!

Typical street in Venice.  Literally the houses are coming out of the water!

No cars, so everyone has to travel by boat--even the ambulance!

Quintessential Venice--a gonola under the Rialto bridge!!

 Few more Italian stops before we are off to Greece.  More posts/pictures soon!

Nice!

Nice, France

-     We traveled from Andorra to Nice.

-    We took a train that stopped in Toulouse, seemed like a gross place with lots of police and armed guards in the train station dealing with one petty incident after another while we waited for our trains.

-          We rode the trains from midnight until 8am. The ride for the last two hours was really nice as the trains voyage snaked along the coastline with bright coloured houses and villages on one side with the ocean on the other.  A great view of the southern point of the French Apls too

-           

We stayed at a great place that was situated on the hills overlooking Nice.  It was an old residence for nuns that was turned into a bed and breakfast.  The owner of the place was keen to talk to each of the guests to give them maps he had created for his business as to what sites to see in day trips, the best way to tour around and the costs.

We rode the Tram down to the train station from our hotel. Hopped on a commuter train to stop on Antibes on the way to Cannes ( a nice tip by our hotel owner that we would not have otherwise known)

The train ride to Antibes was 20 minutes to the east of Nice and Cannes was a further 10 minutes past Antibes to the east.

Antibes was an old walled city that has a large marina with gigantic yachts parked in it. The one giant yacht must have been the size of the old Maple Leaf Gardens. It was monstrously large.  We walked out along the old wall of the city that extended out to separate the marine from the water.  A great view of Nice, the harbor and the ocean.  We walked back through the gates of the old city passing markets, patio restaurants and many other stores. It’s amazing to see how all of the towns were squished together within the old city walls hundreds of years ago.

We had lunch and then went into the Picasso museum. The museum was an old castle, ( we think) that was owned by the Girmaldi family (the people who are the royalty of Monaco) and they sold it to the town of Antibes a long time ago.  Picasso was invited to spend a few months at the castle to complete art work. Much of the art that he created when he was in Antibes was donated to the town and since then the building had been transformed to become a Picasso musem.  It’s a small collection with many sketches and random pieces of art. It was fun to visit and “get cultured”

After four hours in Antibes, we left thoroughly impressed feeling we could have stayed longer but we needed to get to Cannes at some point in the day.  Cannes had a nice waterfront walking path, but it is crowded and full of wallahs with fake purses, ice cream, and other tourist trap material. The old hotels that lined that water were interesting and trying to imagine how much it would cost to stay a nice place and if they places have squat or western toilets (sorry for the Nepal joke).

We walked along the waterfront, returned back of the street with the high priced shopping and then back to the train station. We arrived at the station to see a train was just about to leave for Nice so we ran aboard. We then realized the train was much nicer than the one we had rode in to Cannes.  We realized that the train was actually a high speed long distance train that was on its way from Paris and had dropped off people in Cannes on the way and we probably should not have been on the train with our passes. We enjoyed the ride back to Nice anyways and experienced just how nice the long distance trains are to the bigger city. (Did you see what I did there?)

We really enjoyed Antibes and are happy that our hotel man told us we should stop there. He explained it as Antibes is a town you really want to see where Cannes is lacking a lot of substance. He was exactly right.  One would think that with the Cannes film festival being held there each year it would be the best spot.  Maybe Cannes has the convention centre so it holds the show, but Antibes was the real star of the day.

Day two we journeyed to the west for our day of Eze and Monaco. Eze is a hillside town that features a castle that overlooks the water and the surrounding countryside.  Sixteen km’s beyond Eze to the west is the micro country of Monaco.

We rode the city bus up along to the mountain side west of Nice to the town of Eze. The bus ride was great in itself as the road climbs up the size of the mountains as it departs Nice which provides great view of the area as it winds along to Eze.

Our few hours in Eze allowed us to walk up to the castle and enjoy the view from the gardens at the top of the old castle. It is a really nice spot and whoever owned the castle imported all kinds of cactus to the top of the castle.  We snapped a few photos and had some lunch before travelling onto Monaco.

After we departed the bus in Monaco, we completed the walk along the top of the harbor to get a good view of some more monster yachts and the famous Monte Carlo Casino.  We entered the Casino front doors into the main room, which anyone is allowed to do for free, but we declined to pay to go into the main gambling area, as we could see people lose their money for free at the casino next door.  We have no pictures from inside the casino as cameras were not allowed, so you will have to take our word for it that it was a good looking place.

We walked around the town trying not to get run over by expensive cars or yelled at by the men with the silly hats in front of the hotels for walking in the wrong areas.  Monaco is a beautiful city situated on the size of the mountain and I am sure would be a great place to have an tax haven bank account or moor a three hundred foot yacht registered to the Cayman Islands. Maybe we will do that someday.

With our time complete in France we hopped back on the train to continue on to Italy.  We were on the way to the Parco de National Cineque Terre on the Italian coastline just east of Genoa. 

Someday we will have a yacht like this!  Notice the helicopter on the back....
This is the Antibes harbour.

Antibes harbour.  You can see the walled city in the background.

Neat looking sculpture on the wall of Antibes.

Antibes market.

Beach outside of the wall of Antibes.

Cannes waterfront.  The big white building is the convention center, where the Cannes Film Festival is held.

Our view from our hostel, overlooking the town of Nice, right down to the water.

Picasso Museum in Antibes.

Nice town.

Harbour.

Streets of Antibes, full of palm trees!

Steve with the hills of Nice/Monaco behind him.  He is standing on the wall of Antibes.

This is a street up on the hill of Eze.  Little tiny alleyways separate the buildings.

The view from the gardens at the top of Eze were amazing!

Able to look over the whole coastline from the top of Eze.

Photo from the top of Eze.  Can see all the way to Nice at the bottom!

More expensive toys you'll find in Monaco!

Fancy cars + Fancy casinos = men in fancy hats directing you where to go!

Gardens in front of the Monte Carlo Casino.  They are all decorated up for the tennis tournament that was being held in Monaco when we were there.

Casino.

Shot of a street in Monaco.  Very beautiful buildings!

EUROPE!

Long time, no post!!  We are very sorry to our faithful followers; we’ve now been in Europe over two weeks and have been having such a great time with family and friends that we haven’t managed to document it in blog form.  We do apologize and hope to keep more regular updates from here on out!! We are going to try a different format of more pics less typing this time, so hopefully you like it.

England: London-Stapleford-Cambridge-Sedberg; March 30 to April 10

Our European adventure started off in London, where we were welcomed with open arms into Susannah and Patricks flat (Ang’s cousin and boyfriend, for those who don’t know).  It was wonderful to finally be back in a Western location and to be in a home after a lot of months on the road.  Our weekend consisted of an introduction to English cuisine (goggle ‘toad in the hole’, for anyone looking for a great recipe!!), sampling local beers at the pub, strolling around the nice parks of London and an action packed day of rugby union, watching the Harlequins take down Saracens at Wembley stadium in front of a record 83000 person crowd.  Much to our dismay, an iphone update has erased all these pictures, so we only have the memories in our minds rather than picture form—you’ll have to trust us it was an amazing weekend!!

We travelled from London to Cambridge by train to visit Ang’s aunt and uncle, accompanied by Susannah who conveniently was off work for Easter holidays.  We had four days with Maureen and John in Stapleford and our days were jam packed with English experiences.  Drives in the countryside, pub lunches, quaint villages complete with beautiful churches and visits to historic English castles was complemented by the generosity and enthusiasm of Aunt Maureen and Uncle John.  

Nice spring day spent exploring Hedingham Castle, a short drive away from Stapleford.  This is a  castle built in the 12th century and is described as the best kept Norman period castle in England.  We had a nice afternoon in the castle, as well as walking through the blooming trees on the yard surrounding the castle.

Taking part in the castles "tickle trunk'

Lavenham, England; a perfect example of a picturesque English village.  

The Street family treated us to high tea at The Swan in Lavenham.  It is a beautiful old building and we have never had such delicious treats in our life!  "High tea" consists of finger sandwiches (salmon, cucumber, ham), scones with butter, clotted cream and jam (there is no equivalent to clotted cream in Canada, and boy are we missing out!) as well as a selection of fine pastries.  Obviously this is served with your choice of tea, and was a much enjoyed treat by all!  Pinkies up!

On Thursday we loaded into the car, heading off to the North for our first English Easter.  We were travelling up to Sedberg to share the holiday with John’s stepmother, Pat.  Sedberg is a little English town located about five hours drive North of Cambridge, only a few kilometers further and you’ve made it to Scotland!  Along the way we stopped to enjoy more English history and take in the sites.  It was a wonderful weekend and something we won’t soon forget—thanks for everything Aunt Maureen and Uncle John!!

Hardwick Hall, a 16th century prodigy house, a model of the Elizabethan era in Chesterfield, England, which we stopped at on our drive from Stapleford to Sedberg.  This house is significantly different from the previous castle--Hedingham would have been a fortress in battle, whereas this house was more for show.  The house was beautiful and we really enjoyed walking the grounds, especially with the freshly fallen snow!

This is one picture from within Hardwick Hall.  Notice the detailed tapestries hanging on the walls--these were a trend of the time, and some rooms were actually covered completely in tapestry!  Carpet was too beautiful to be on the floor, so you walked on weaved materials and the tapestries hung on the wall. 

The view from our backyard in Sedberg.  Maureen and John treated us to renting out an entire B+B for the weekend.  It was a beautiful home with an even more beautiful view of the hills out our big picture windows! We hiked in the hills which are called moors in England but in this part of the country the moors are referred to as "fells". Yes we are just as confused but enjoyed the hiking just the same. 

This is the Dent town church.  Dent is a little village about 10 minutes drive from Sedberg, and apparently Angela's great-great (maybe one more great???) grandmother was married in this town, before moving to Canada.  We weren't lucky enough to find any graves of our relatives, but did find lots of references to our "Willan" relatives in other places and had a wonderful day exploring this village!

The Saturday of Easter weekend saw us exploring the countryside surrounding Sedberg, first stopping to see  the prehistoric creation of Castlerigg stone cirlces.  No one knows exactly how these stones ended up here, or what the purpose was, but it is quite impressive to see this round arrangement of large boulders, set in a lush green valley. 

After Castlerigg, our exploring took us onwards and upwards.  Well, up to 3000ft, which is nothing compared to Nepal, but quite high in British terms!  Sedberg is in an area known as the "Lake District" and you can see why!  We hiked up this hill and had a panoramic view over two lakes.  If you use your imagination, you can see all the way to Scotland in the top left corner!!

Steve and Ang, on top of the world again!

Easter lunch.  Pictured from left to right are John, his stepmother Pat, Angela and Steve.  If you look carefully, you can see the newest Street-Easter tradition--our Easter tree!!  We had a great day filled with delicious food, good company and a very competitive Easter egg hunt!

On our drive back to Stapleford, we took advantage of the British historical sights and stopped at Middleham Castle.  This impressive village was once lived in by Richard the third and was built in the 11th century.  Although it is in significantly more disrepair than the Hedingham Castle, this was neat because you were able to see the fortified wall and the surrounding buildings, in addition to the castle itself.  This castle would have functioned like a city within the walls, and you were able to appreciate that from our visit.  This pic is from up on the top floor of the Castle, overlooking the town of Middleham where we enjoyed a wonderful pub lunch. 

Maureen and John were kind enough to drop us at a train station so that we could make our way to London, to prepare for the next leg of our European journey.  We thought some of you Harry Potter fans might appreciate seeing the real "Platform 9 and 3/4".  If you can believe it, there was a line-up to get your picture taken at the Kings Cross station in London, so we settled for the second best--Asian tourists doing the Harry Potter run off to Hogwarts!

Barcelona, Spain; April 10 to April 13

Due to perfect timing with this extended Easter Holiday that the House of Lords takes, Susannah was able to accompany us on the first leg of our continental European adventure.  After an early morning flight, we arrived in Barcelona just in time to sample our first paella and sangria.  We had a nice wander around the Barcelona waterfront and enjoyed our first siesta—enjoying life like the Spaniards!!  Did you know that Spain eats the second most seafood in the world??  Well, we learned this fact and put it to the test, with our first night’s dinner in a traditional Spanish fish restaurant, complete with delicious tapas and paella and our second night full of sushi.  We also discovered an amazing Spanish wine; we are happy to boast that we never had a bad bottle of red wine from the Rioja district throughout our time in Spain!!  Not sure if the LCBO stocks any of the Rioja wines, but we would highly recommend trying them if you can get your hands on one!  Our trip was rounded out with some time on the beach, a walking tour of the city, and an afternoon spent enjoying the Sagrada Familia Cathedral.  This city has a ton of life and wonderful atmosphere, a perfect start to our mainland Europe trip.

Barcelona beach, literally a ten minute walk from downtown.

Susannah testing out the Mediterranean--her face tells you just how cold it was!!

Angela and Susannah relaxing at the "tables" at a cafe just off of the Barcelona beach.  We all enjoyed some wonderful Sangria here, and started off our sushi evening.

Sushi!!  And our delicious Rioja region wine is making an appearance too!

Yes, this is looking like the Ang and Susannah party, but we do promise Steve was along for all these adventures too!  Someone had to create the masterpieces from behind the lens. Some cusio-love, sharing our guided tour of the Segrada Familia Cathedral, the Gaudi Cathedral still a work in progress, after over 100 years of work!

This is the back side of the Segrada Familia.  This side is depicting the Passion of Christ.  There are 12 stations carved out over the entire face of the church.  Notice that other than the actual stations themselves, the facade is quite bland to represent the mood of the Passion.

The colours inside of this church due to the stained glass is absolutely stunning.  This picture does not do it justice!

The altar at the church.  Notice the organ, as well as the stained glass surrounding the altar.

This is the back side of the church, depicting the birth of Christ.  We know its difficult to appreciate the details, but the difference between the birth and the Passion of Christ is just remarkable.  Gaudi wanted the birth to be full of happiness and fecundity--and we think he got his point across!

This is a pic trying to give you an idea what the whole church looks like.  It is hard to photograph, being such a monstrous building, but you can see the tall towers surrounding the church.  There will be 18 spires in all, 12 to represent the apostles, four to represent the Evangelists, one for Mary and the tallest to represent Jesus.  It is an overwhelming and remarkable building--we usually don't put up this many pictures of a church, but we actually had a hard time paring down the pictures to post!  The church is expected to be finished maybe in 2020, but possibly more like 2050--we've already planned the reunion Barcelona tour to see it completed, because this was truly a remarkable piece of art.

Andorra; April 13 to April 15

What is Andorra, you may be saying??  Well this tiny micro country (486 sq km—2.5 times smaller than Paris!, population 81000), located in the Pyrennes mountains wedged between Spain and France is a country known for its hiking and skiing.  When we planned our continental Europe time, we had planned on doing some hiking in the Pyrennes, but as luck would have it, we arrived just in time for the final weekend of skiing!!  Before we took to the slopes, we did have a very relaxing day at the caldea spa (see www.caldea.ad for some pics—no cameras taken inside!!), treating ourselves to the VIP wellness area, including Turkish steam bath, Aztec pool and a grapefruit bath!   Saturday was more adventurous, with us taking to the slopes of Granvallaria.  This is a hill like none other we have ever seen.  It’s combined of about five different mountains, with terrain over 250 sq km (remember, the whole country is only 486!!)  You take the gondola from the center of town, and then go up lifts and ski down the other side, over and over until you are to the border of France.  The mountains were beautiful and our weather was wonderful; this is definitely a highlight of our trip.  We had forgotten what it felt like to ski and are really missing our BC winters of the past!  We had our first snowfall of 2012 up on the hill and enjoyed seeing Susannah strut her stuff (a very good skier, if we do say so ourselves!!)  Our weekend was topped off again with delicious food and Rioja wine, including a cheese and chocolate fondue dinner!  Susannah boarded a bus back to Barcelona, as apparently some people have something known as a job that they have to return to, and we took a bus on to France, stopping in Toulouse to board a train to the supposed sunny south of the Cote d’Azur.  We say supposed, because as we purchased our tickets to Nice, the train attendant apologized for how cold the weather has been.  We responded by saying that it is still cold in Canada, so we aren’t too concerned, and he responded that of course it is cold in Canada, but it’s not supposed to be this cold in Nice!!

This is hard to capture, but this is the gondolla we took up from the Encamp base of the Grandvallaria  ski hill.  We are literally in a town (we rented skis not 200m away from where we got onto the Gondola)--no snow, no sign of skiing anywhere other than this Gondola to what appears to be nowhere, yet within about 20 minutes you are transported to ski heaven!

Cousins enjoying our beautiful Andorra ski day.  We were impressed with Sussanah's skiing ability.  The impressive part was  by accident she buckled into a pair of rentals after lunch that she though was her pair, but in fair someone else skis. We had no idea and when we returned our skis, the lady at the store said we had the skis for the other rental store. She was impressed Sussanah was able to ski in the other rental pair all afternoon without adjustments to the bindings. 

Steve finally makes an appearance in the pictures!!  We loved this view, as the peaks of the Pyrennes were so unique and beautiful throughout this entire ski field.  Oh yeah--and we proved you don't need any fancy gear for spring skiing...we are wearing our hiking pants, Steve has his Jays hat on and Ang used socks for mittens!

Just one beautiful shot of our views from atop of Andorra.

Now this is a funny story!  Ang ordered toasted bread with tomato and garlic, in addition to her french onion soup for lunch.  We all thought Ang was ordering the equivalent of bruschetta, but literally she got toast, two tomatoes and two cloves of garlic in a basket!!  We thought for sure someone was taking a piss, but Steve asked the waiter and we learned about a very traditional Catalan dish.  You take your toast, rub it with the garlic (cut the clove but leave it peeled, so you don't get the garlic smell on your hands).  Then you rub the bread with the tomato, and we found it worked best if you squeezed a little of the tomato juice out too.  Then you top it with a little olive oil and salt and VOILA--a delicious Catalan treat!!  We found out at dinner, that this treat is also delicious topped with the famous Iberian ham of Spain and Andorra.  We really did have some delicious meals in our first few days in Europe!

More posts from France and Italy to come, as the adventure continues!!