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| Porto Venere, Cinque
Terre, Italy (UNESCO) |
After a wonderful trip through Italy’s Tuscany region, we are now
heading further north in Italy, to Porto Venere and Cinque Terre, both UNESCO
World Heritage sites.
Arriving in Porto Venere, we drove down a very narrow winding road,
to the beautiful village, which has colourful houses clustered right around the
waterfront.
However, there was no parking there. So, Leigh jumped out to take
photos, and Marg skilfully turned our large campervan around in the wee street, and we
drove on to Camping Alba D Oro, in Levanto. This then became our base for
exploring Cinque Terre.
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| Riomaggiore, one of the 5 vilages of Cinque Terre |
Levanto has some attractive shops and cafes, including a café with
free wifi…yaaay! We’ve had difficulty accessing wifi throughout Italy, mostly
because there was none, or it was exorbitantly expensive.
We had planned a visit to the 5 villages that comprise Cinque Terre,
but the day turned into a real thunder and lightning storm, and the rain
absolutely poured down.
The sun returned the next day so we caught the train to Riomaggiore,
one of the 5 villages.
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| Coffee amid the fishing paraphernalia in Riomaggiore |
It is a quaint fishing village, with pastel coloured houses tightly
packed together, and cascading down both sides of a small valley to the sea.
It’s very beautiful.
It was overcast on the day we were there and the sea was very
choppy, giving the bay and the village, a very dramatic feel.
After a great coffee, sitting beside a cobbled slipway and
surrounded by fishing paraphernalia, we walked the “via dell’Amore”. This is
the road of love, between Riomaggiore and Manarola,
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| On the via
dell'Amore, with Manarola behind |
On the way, we noticed thousands of padlocks and knick-knacks with
names on, attached to the fences. They had been placed there by
people avowing their love.
So, Marg dug out a Kiwi Jandal key ring that she had in her pack,
and we wrote our names on it and hung it on the fence; very romantic!!
We soon arrived in Manarola. It’s built on a clifftop, about 70
metres above the sea. The colourful houses seem precariously perched at the
top, ready to tumble downwards. However, its been there since the 12th century
so they must be pretty solid.
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| Monterosso |
It has a lovely small harbour shared by swimmers and boats, and a
small piazza with cafés and restaurants.
We walked around this tiny town in no time at all, with one of the
highlights being the 14th century church of San Lorenzo, with its beautiful
rose window.
Our next village was Vernazza. It has a natural harbour with a long,
curved bay, and also has colourful houses tumbling down the hillside.
After that, we went to Monterosso. This is a fishing village, and
seemed bigger than the other villages that we visited.
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| Pastel coloured
houses of Cinque Terre |
It has a nice sandy beach in the “newer” part of town, and we
stopped to have a beer and cool off in the overcast, but sticky heat.
After a bit more walking around, we made a dash to the train
station, thinking we would miss the afternoon train. As it turned out, the
train was late and we were ok.
We enjoyed seeing four of the five villages, with Riomaggiore and
Manarola being our favourites.
After a few days there, we drove to Venice, on the opposite
coastline to Cinque Terre. En-route we saw masses of black flying ants swarming
over trees, and in clusters hovering over the road. They were so thick we thought from a
distance, that it was smoke!
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| Venice on the Grand Canal |
Our Venice campsite was at Fusina on the Venice lagoon, and we
looked straight across the water to Venice township. It was a fantastic
location.
We caught a ferry from just down the road that took us right into
Venice, and found it quite amazing that there were no cars or motor scooters to
compete with once there. Instead, there are boats rushing everywhere, and
delivery people with trolleys laden with goods doing their job on foot.
The age of Venice is amazing and the buildings and winding streets,
fascinating.
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| In front of the Dodge's Palace, Venice |
We had a lovely lunch right on a canal with boats of all shapes and
sizes buzzing everywhere.
When we reached Piazza San Marco, we had a look around the Dodge’s
Palace, then Leigh spotted Cafe Florian, a place that is known for its music,
so we had to stop and have a coffee.
It was a bit of a shock when the bill arrived - we expected that the
coffee would be horrendously expensive, but they also charged us 6 Euros each
for the music! Only in Venice! It was worth it though as the music was great,
and the people watching was very interesting.
Then we popped into the Peggy Guggenheim Art Collection which was showing in a beautiful building that had been her home. It was fabulous.
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| Michael Parekowhai's
carved piano at the Venice Art Festival |
It was the Venice Art Festival while we were there, and while wandering around, we found stickers on the footpath about New Zealand. We followed them and they directed us to an exhibition by Michael Parekowhai, a New Zealand sculptor. It was a wonderful exhibition.
We also bumped into Ariana from Creative NZ who we worked with on a
Creative NZ project a couple of years ago in Wellington – small, small
world!
Later, back at the campsite, Liz and Stuart an English couple,
expressed surprise that for ‘Czechs’ we spoke such good English…until we
explained that, although Vanni is Czech registered, we are Kiwis.
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| Leigh in Venice |
This has has happened to us a lot. It’s
common practice at European campgrounds to look at car registration plates, to identify
which country you come from, sometimes erroneously.
Also, many people have expressed amazement that we are so far from home, and travelling for so long. It’s been a great
ice-breaker, and we have had lots of great conversations with people from all
over the world as a result.
We enjoyed our break in Venice, and then pressed on to Muggia, another seaside town.
Entering Muggia, we had to drive through a one-way tunnel that went on for around 1.5 km in a circle to get into the township, and a very narrow town gate to get out again – quite a challenge in our large campervan, Vanni.
It has a small historic centre, and lovely harbour. They had an interesting antique fair on when we were there, and later we walked up to their old castle, but it was closed.
However, after 6 weeks of driving throughout Italy, we are quite convinced that Italian drivers are a little crazy.
We enjoyed our break in Venice, and then pressed on to Muggia, another seaside town.
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| Muggia's harbour |
It has a small historic centre, and lovely harbour. They had an interesting antique fair on when we were there, and later we walked up to their old castle, but it was closed.
Muggia was our last stop in Italy,
However, after 6 weeks of driving throughout Italy, we are quite convinced that Italian drivers are a little crazy.
There seems to be a universal need to cross over the white line when driving around a corner; to our great consternation - it leaves very little room for them to pass a 2.3 m wide van. Challenging, but we must admit some others are daunted by the sight of our size, and veer as far right as they can go to avoid us.
No-passing lines mean the opposite in Italy, as do stop signs and
red lights. Often, a one-way-street sign means you can go both ways unless
someone comes the other way, in which case you race them to the end of the
street, or pull over hoping that they can squeeze past.
Italian road direction signs can also be a challenge. Often you get a signpost for your destination about 100 km in advance, and then nothing else at
all until you’ve passed the place. And, a sign may say 100 kms to the place
you’re going to, and then 5 km further on, it may say 125 kms! We’re not quite
sure how they work it out.
Despite their faults we think we are now driving like Italians - we
beep when we are going to pass someone (to let them know politely), beep more
loudly if someone is going to pull out in front of us, or opens their car door in
front of us (major Italian fault!), and we don’t stop to give way to other cars
at an intersection - like Italians, we just go for it. All good fun!
So, our time here in Italy is up, and after a fabulous time, we are
moving on to Istria.
This blog describes part of our 7 month motorhome trip around central and southern Europe, which began in Germany in April.
This blog describes part of our 7 month motorhome trip around central and southern Europe, which began in Germany in April.