Market Day in Arles

We spent three full days in Arles, France, with side trips to Avignon and the Pont du Gard (separate posts coming!).  Arles has some ancient Roman ruins including an amphitheatre that is used for bull fights, mostly of the nicer variety where the men in the ring are merely trying to pull a ribbon from between the bull's horns.

In this shot, you can see the metal bleachers that have been added inside.  I love when these ancient structures are still in use:

Arles also has a regular theatre (of the non-amphi variety):

However, my favorite part was the market (held on Wednesdays and Saturdays) where you can buy fruits and vegetables, looseleaf tea and spices:

Mattresses!  I guess you never know when you are going to get the urge to buy one of those?

A hacksaw and cleaver set... for the butcher-in-training?

And let's not forget Nutella crepes:

Paul and I also purchased some tomatoes, bread, cheese, olive tapanade, and other such goodies for a picnic.  That scary looking bottle of Coke in the picture below is actually iced tea made from some looseleaf tea we picked up:

On another picnic, we enjoyed a fabulous three chocolate cake.  I may not speak much French, but I can interpret a sign that says "trois chocolat" when I see one (never mind the gorgeous cake sitting next to it that is a dead giveaway):

One might say that we are eating quite well on this trip.

Popping Over to Pisa

While we were on the train to Viareggio, we realized that it continued on to Pisa and that Pisa is just a short hop away.  So, for our first act of spontaneity on this trip, we decided to just pop over to Pisa and see the famous leaning tower after our stop in Viareggio:

And because we thought the niece and nephews might get a kick out of it (and because everyone else was doing it, and hey, peer pressure!), here I am, holding up the tower:

Paul also liked the Triforce pattern above some of the arches - this goes out to all you Zelda fans (you know who you are... Ryan...):

This is our last blog post of Italy.  It was sad to see Italy go, not least of which for the fact that I understand Italian quite a bit better than French.  If you're curious to see a nice map of the stops we made in Italy, check out our "Where are Kate and Paul?" map. 

Viareggio

This post is for my grandpa, who was stationed in Viareggio during WWII.  He had told me about Viareggio before we left for our trip, but it wasn't really on our itinerary.  Then, I called him from Italy using Google Voice, and he said we should go there.  So we did.

Our main goal for Viareggio was to try to find things that were there when my grandpa was.  We found a church that had a plaque indicating that it was built long before then:

And this shop/restaurant along a road near the beach:

This pier may have been around as well:

It says "Viareggio in te son nato in te spero morire"

Other than that, we mainly checked out the beach.  I don't know what it was like when my grandpa was there, but Viareggio is definitely a resort town now.  The huge beach is lined with reserved areas to which the many hotels have staked their claims:

And finally, a leisurely walk on the beach:

A Roller Coaster Vineyard Ride

The Cinque Terre is well-known for its wonderful hiking paths between the five cities.  However, when we attempted to take one of the paths from Manarola, we discovered it was closed.  After locating the information office, we were informed that only one of the sections was open - between Vernazza and Monterosso.

Trains run frequently between the cities, and our Eurail pass lets us just hop on, so we caught the train to Vernazza and found the trail.  It turns out that this is the most strenuous of the paths - by a lot.  Some of the others are nice paved level paths along the water, which is what I had in mind.  This path, however, was not.  Instead of a leisurely stroll, we got quite the workout.  However, there were some great photo opportunities.

Me among the grapevines. (this is at the very beginning of the trek, before we knew what we were in for):

The city of Vernazza (I love the colorful umbrellas):

The ocean - so lovely!

And finally, a view of the rollercoaster vineyard ride:

These tracks were everywhere on the hills in the Cinque Terre.  We didn't see any actively in use, but a picture of what the vehicle that uses this track would look like can be found here.  Pretty neat!

Beautiful Vistas in Manarola

We spent 2.5 days in Manarola, a city in Italy's Cinque Terre.  On one of those days, we day-tripped to other locations - more on that in future posts.

In Manarola, we had a sea view room:

On our first evening, we went for a little walk.  Which turned out not to be so little after all.  Hiking in unfamiliar locations can wind up taking longer than you intend because you find yourself saying "but I'm sure there's a great view (or some other great thing) just around that bend!"  This was one of those walks.  Here's one view:

And another one - taken when we were happily bouncing back down the hill:

And another view - of the town of Manarola:

Paul also took a great panorama with his phone:

After a delicious and well-deserved dinner of pesto lasagna (seriously must make this one at home!) and lobster spaghetti, we enjoyed the view of the sea at night:

Paul also got a good shot of the town:

Chefs Extraordinaire!

Paul and I are now master Italian chefs!  We took a 6 hour cooking class on our last day in Lake Como and are ready to wow everyone back home with our mad cooking skillz!

Okay, so that might be a slight exaggeration.

On Thursday, Chef Moreno Maglia picked us up from a piazza near our hotel at 10am.  By 10:30, we were at his restaurant, Il Caminetto, enjoying cappuccinos (have I mentioned yet that the cappuccinos in Italy are amazing?) and cookies.  By 4:30, he dropped us back off at the piazza.  So, maybe not 6 full hours of cooking, but a long day nonetheless.

Chef Moreno smushing the potatoes for the gnocchi

There were ten people in the class: us, two Wisconsinites, two Canadians, and four Australians (one of whom was an academic librarian!).  It was fun to spend some time with other folks, chatting, watching Chef Moreno cook, and eating delicious food.

The class wasn't overly participatory, so the only hands-on experience we got was rolling out and cutting up gnocchi dough.  Paul and I both gave it a try:

Roll that dough, Paul!

Chef Moreno showed us how to make three dishes:

1. Gnocchi with a creamy zucchini sauce:

2. Tagliatelle in a tomato sausage sauce:

3. Porcini mushroom risotto (turns out the key ingredients to this one are loads of butter and cheese - delicious!):

The ingredients were surprisingly simple (well, beyond issues like the need to get low pasteurized cream and such, which I'm sure would be a challenge in the US), yet the food was amazing.  The endlessly flowing wine didn't hurt either!

We also had a simply amazing pumpkin gnocchi dish at a restaurant in Lake Como the other day that I will be very tempted to try to replicate.  It's clearly a lot of work to make homemade pasta, but where gnocchi is concerned, it's completely worth it.  The homemade gnocchi we've had is many times better than that which you can purchase in a store in the US.

The Lovely Lake Como

Lake Como is bellissimo!  No wonder so many people vacation there.  Unfortunately, our visit coincided with what locals told us is the coldest spring in a hundred years or more.  Normally, it's 75-80 there, I think.  We considered ourselves quite lucky on the third day when we neared 65 degrees.  The other days were more in the 50s and very low 60s.  It was also cloudy and rainy the first 1.5 days, although the rain mostly stayed away while we were out and about.

We had a lovely view from our hotel room at Eremo Gaudio, a former hermitage, in the town of Varenna:

This hotel has its own private funicular.  We were in a room on the bottom part but took the funicular up to the top part twice for the wonderful views from the terrace:

There are a variety of ferries that you can take to other parts of the lake.  I was amused by the ferries for transporting vehicles.  It's pretty amazing to watch a large bus drive off of a ferry!

On our first full day on Lake Como, we took a ferry to the nearby city of Bellagio - it's a little bigger and has a lot more touristy shopping.  From the ferry, we admired the views of the Alps.  The photo belowwasn't actually taken from the ferry but shows some of the Alps hiding in the clouds.  I think at this time of year, there should not be any snow on them - ha!

In Bellagio, we purchased windbreakers/water resistant coats.  It's certainly been windy and rainy.  Plus, with plans to visit the Alps, we felt we'd get good use out of these.  Also, we match:

I would like to mention that I picked the coat first, and then Paul decided he liked it, too.  He said he was already planning on a black coat anyway, but I think he's just making excuses....

We also found a cute little library in Bellagio.  It's only open from 5-6:30 in the evening (wow, how do you like those hours?) though, so we didn't manage to go inside:

Walking away from the main shopping strip in Bellagio gave us some really great views - of the flowers growing along the rock walls leading to the water (this photo is taken looking downward along the wall into the water):

And of the scenery:

On our second day in Varenna, we took a cooking class, which I'll write about in another post, and went for a hike with yet more views of this gorgeous mountainous lake:

So far, there aren't a ton of places from this trip that I feel I must return to in the future, but Lake Como is definitely my top pick.  Especially if it were warmer.

Also, we've discovered that Italians take their hot chocolate seriously.  That stuff is thick and chocolate-y!  At first, I was kind of sad that they only filled the mug halfway, but then I learned why - can you see the thick drip of chocolate dangling off the spoon?

That's what I look like when wired up on chocolate, by the way (or when Paul uses the flash in a dark room).

And lastly, they have some peculiar tree-trimming habits in Lake Como.  They cut off the large branches and leave only the water sprouts, which I've always called suckers.  However, while looking up the term, I learned that suckers originate from the root of the tree.  These are water sprouts, since they are shooting up from large branches.  Who knew?  This isn't the best photo of it, unfortunately, but hopefully you can see how the very thick branches are covered with leaves from the water sprouts: