Welcome to France - Not a Great Start

To be able to get anywhere quickly in Italy or France, one must take the Autostrada or Autoroute (freeway to us). Its pretty straightforward until you are west of Genoa. Then the spines of the Alps go right to the Mediterranean, causing a real problem for road builders, as the road intersects the ridges at a right angle. But they have taken it in stride and built an amazing series of tunnels and bridges that barge their way across and through the landscape. You had better not want to gaze at the view cause you rarely get to see it!

All this comes at a price, meaning, a price to those who take these roads. Gary worked it out to cost ten cents a kilometer. So if you drive for an hour (about 100 km), then expect to pay $10. Its user-pay in France, Italy and Spain (though not in Germany nor the UK).

Entering France
We had a reservation at a hostel, just barely inside France, right on the Med in Menton. Finding the hostel was a huge challenge. You would think that not having recording the address would be the biggest obstacle to finding it, but in fact it was the lack of signage. We found one sign, proceeded along the road, finally went into a campground, it didn't look right so we turned around and paced up and down the road looking for a sign that said Auberge or showed the icon for hostels. No such luck. Finally it was found, at the campground, in a building at the back. We looked for that place for over an hour. No wonder we were almost the only people there!!

The best feature of the hostel

The guy running the place had a major case of 'tude, so there was no point in telling him there needed to be better signage. After setting up our room we wanted to prepare some food in the big commercial kitchen, but the hostel-master was true to our first impression of him, and informed us that it was not for our use. We went to bed that night feeling confident that our morning breakfast would be something special with such a marvelous kitchen for the cook to work in.

So with eager anticipation we went out to the eating area. Hmmm... A container of corn flake-type things and baguette slices that must have been at least a day old. Nothing was produced in that kitchen.

But there was an upside. We sat with a wonderful couple from Austria. They were on a cycling trip for a couple of weeks. So we left with good memories of the place.

Buildings were beautiful in Nice

This looked like an automatic bike rental in Nice. Looked like it was well-used too.

Hiking the Cinque Terre

Another of my long-held goals was accomplished when we hiked the Cinque Terre, which is the trail that connects 5 of the cliff-hugging villages on the north-west coast of Italy, south of Genoa. The area is a National Park and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

La Spezia, the city you must go through to get to the south end of the Cinque Terre. We camped in a mosquito-infested campground near here in 1996.

Many years ago the only way to go between the villages was to walk the path, but now there is both a railroad and a boat to take you to each of the charming villages. Mobs of tourists simply take the railroad or a boat from village to village, flooding the lovely little towns. Definitely spoils it, but is good for the economy of the small towns. The hike itself is nice and the towns are gorgeous, but I do wonder how the locals cope! We were there on a beautiful sunny Saturday at the beginning of October and there truly were mobs of tourists.

And some of those stupid tourists even take pictures of their laundry hanging out to dry!

In Riomaggiori I was finally able to take a picture of my favourite vehicle, the three-wheeled truck.

We started at the south end. The path to the next village, Manarola was beautifully paved, and due to it being such a short and easy path, the stream of people reminded me of a shopping mall in December. But once the hiking got a little more strenuous the mob was greatly reduced.

Next village, Manarola

Looking back at Manarola

Next village, Corniglia

If you enlarge this picture you will see a man in the water, floating on his back.

We seemed to have accidently found the easier way up to Corniglia, a paved road. Others were climbing the 368 steps. Oh well...  These two buildings were parked well away from everything else. They really stood out, for more than one reason!

It seems that British Columbia is not the only place with wildfires! Corniglia came very close to being burned.

 

Terraced hillsides all over the place. Guess what they were growing on them? Grapes and olives. Just what Italy is famous for.

The gadget above and the track below were likely used to haul the grape harvest up the steep hill.

 

The path took us through part of the burned area, a former olive grove.

Approaching Vernazza, the fourth of the five villages. It was the end of the trail for us, as we still had to drive to France that day.

Charming houses

This may have been set out special for the stream of walkers, so maybe they don't mind us too much.

When there was a break in the crowd I squatted down and snapped this pic. As I stood up, someone was taking a picture of me taking that picture!

Looking at Vernazza from the pier

A map of the Cinque Terre National Park's trails. I have read that the upper trails are far less crowded, so maybe on my next trip to Italy I will visit them.

Gary was not able to do the hike with us, due to his recent back operation. But he was still able to take in some of the scenery by driving to viewpoints such as this one.

 

The Last Supper

In a few minutes we were to split up. Liana flew back to London, while Gary and Kent drove Rory and I to Menton, which is just inside France. Then Kent flew from Milan back to Baku in Azerbaijan, Gary flew to Ireland for a week and Rory and I went to a rental in Provence.

Our final meal involved simply sitting on the ground. They just don't know how to do rest areas in Europe the way that we do in North America. Heck, they don't even have washrooms at rest areas!! Next time I take photos I will have to prep Rory in how to prepare to have his picture taken. I don't think he looks normal in a single one that I took. But maybe there will be some better ones in France.

The Day We Went to Castelnuovo - Part Three

For all the letdowns of the day, I have many great memories too. Strange how it works.

On our way to the car we discovered an amazing display of gelato. I had previously had many a cone or dish is Italy, but nowhere was the variety as great, nor the display as attractive as here.

Deeelicious!! Italian gelato contains less butterfat than North American ice cream, so eat it with abandon!!

Liana and Rory counting their pennies. These were by far the least expensive gelatos we encountered. Only 80 Eurocents ($1.30) for a scoop. Price elsewhere was 1.5 Euros.

This cone is one I had in Lucca. It was my first one in Italy. Huge gobs of chocolate that surround something a little crispy.

The other desserts at the gelato shop looked pretty good too!

If you read the previous post, you may remember that I mentioned that we had unknowingly parked the car in less than an ideal spot, right outside the local police station. When we went to the car, another car had pulled in behind us and we were completely trapped. And it had started to rain.

Gary got us out of that situation, by going in and chatting with someone. We guessed that the person behind us was unhappy that we had taken their parking spot and had trapped us there to teach us a lesson. Luckily he was in the station and was able to let us out and seemed to be somewhat amused by our lack of understanding. Whew. We didn't need another letdown.

Taking the longer but much faster and easier route back, we passed by the Ponte della Maddalena, which is nearly a thousand years old!

Typical houses in the area.

The Day We Went to Castelnuovo - Part Two

Despite the nerve-wracking drive, we made it safely to Castelnuovo. After Gary unknowingly parked in the staff parking of the local constabulary, we ventured out to visit the market. The time was 1pm. Anyone who has been to Italy no doubt knows that everything shuts down at 1 (sometimes earlier) until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. The market was no exception, except that it was done for the day. What a letdown!!!!

So this is what my comments from the last post, about the mistakes made earlier in the morning, apply to. If we had left earlier, and if we had taken the route I originally expected to take, we would have arrived in time to see the market.

I felt so bad for Kent, because this was his "day". For our reunion we were pretending that everyone had a birthday and got to choose the activity for the day, and the foods (all prepared in our kitchen) for the evening meal. Kent is a real lover of food and cooking, so his day was falling apart.

But I had my book ("A Culinary Traveller in Tuscany") along. I quote from it: "You will find the perfect choice of local products at this small inauspicious bar/osteria at the entrance to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana. Owner Andrea Bertucci is called the Indiana Jones of the Garfagnana....for his excavating of food traditions and local produce...The place is packed with jars, bottles and dry goods....

...The major attraction is a huge mortadella sausage, looking like a ballistic missile and weighing more than 400 llbs upon arrival, lying on its own fitted table next to the hams and sausages in the corner of the tavern. Slice by slice it lasts about 3 months. Directly next to it sits a large prosciutto Bazzone...its juices almost dripping.

...On the board you find lardo di Garf, a thin slice of seasoned pork fat, a cured carpaccio called manzo di pazzo ("beef for the crazy"), various sausage samplings and some wonderful cheeses of the Garfagnana, all accompanied by thick slabs of farro/potato bread."

Okay, if we had to miss the market, we HAD to find Andrea's store. We arrived at the door to Andrea's, only to find it had a sign hanging in the window, saying that it was closed until Oct 11. Major letdown #2. 
 
Hunger was overtaking us, so we found a restaurant. When we asked for tap water, a man at another table called out to tell us that the tap water was very good here (we drank only tap water on our trip, with absolutely no ill effects). Then when this same man and his friends got up to leave, he told us "Please do not think that all Italians are like Berlusconi or are Communists." Then he left. We guessed that he might have been the mayor of the town. Berlusconi is the president of Italy and his going to the birthday party of an 18 yr old model, etc, makes for some entertaining, if not depressing, reading.

I pulled out my book again and was thrilled to read that there was another food shop named. We found this one to be open. Hooray!!

The store was jam packed with food!!

What a feast for the eyes this place was. The name of this food shop is L'Aia di Piero.

Liana loved this long multi-coloured ribbon pasta. Kent was busy buying up things to take back to Baku.

The Day We Went to Castelnuovo - Part One

Thursday is market day in Castelnuovo and people come from all over the Garfagnana with their produce. A cookbook I have on food in Tuscany said such wonderful things about the market and a couple of shops there, that we just had to go.

Claudi had told me that we didn't need to first drive south to Lucca because there was a more direct route, which she pointed out to me on a map. So we set out around 10am. That was our first mistake, but it could actually be called our second, as it would probably have been better if I had not received that "short-cut" tip.

The route involved a definite uphill climb. Italy is mountainous. Despite being from the mountains of British Columbia, we found the narrow road, the hairpin corners and the drop-off on one side to make for a very memorable drive. Up we climbed, passing mountainside villages that we thought we would not even get near. We also passed a sign that seemed to indicate road construction, but since none of us can read much Italian, we blissfully continued. However, way way up the mountain, the road was closed. A worker indicated we should go via Massa, which involved going right back down to sea level and then up again.

So down we went, passing numerous marble factories. A quick glance at a map showed that we were only about 5 km from Carrara, home of the famous marble of the same name. It was obvious that marble is a large part of the economy of that area.

Then we started to climb again. Another narrow, winding, steep road. At one point we stopped for a stretch. Across a precipice I noted a mountain top was being torn apart, with huge white areas being revealed. This was obviously a marble quarry. Note that I said that it was a mountain top. I assumed we would not be going up there, as in BC roads don't go to the tops of mountain, they go over passes. However Italy doesn't seem to do it the same way. We actually went right by that quarry. We must have climbed from sea level to at least 4000' in about 45 minutes or less.

At our resting spot I heard a big truck coming. I thought it might be a truck carrying marble, so I got myself and my camera ready. It worked! Luckily it moved slowly (if I were driving a big truck down that hill, I would drive slowly too!).

The truck had just passed these signs. Can't imagine how dangerous it would be to drive that truck in the winter!! Nor to meet one of those trucks on the road in the winter.

I see that I don't have any pictures of the quarry. If I remember correctly it was starting to drizzle, or maybe it was the unsettling feeling of being on the edge of a sheer drop-off when looking at the quarry. Anyway, no close-up photo. But when one is down at sea level and looks up to the mountains, at first glance you might think  there is a glacier up there, however it is the marble quarries! And there are many. I am quite sure that the picture below is of the quarry we passed by.

Wine in Italy

On my first trip to a grocery store in Ljubljana I stood in front of the wine, pleasantly surprised at all that was available, and for so cheap!! The cheapest was about 1.95 Euros, or about $3.50 CDN. The display, in a small grocery store, was about 12' in length (4 mtrs). Thinking back on that I laugh, as that store couldn't hold a candle to what I later saw in Italy and France!!

The picture below is from a large grocery store. Please note that I was not able to capture the entire length of aisle of wine and that there was another row facing this one. On the left is Kent choosing his dessert wine to serve with the biscotti.

Claudia, who was in charge of our rental, told me that wine with a rooster on the label around the neck, was supposed to be of higher quality, but she wasn't convinced this was always so. I had tried one bottle of Italian wine already and was quite shocked at how dry is was (you could interpret that as a negative) so I asked Claudia how I could find a wine that was nice for drinking before dinner. She said I needed an aperitif wine and she helped me find one that was not too much like vinegar. But that was the last time I found a pleasant wine in Italy. Even though I picked up a number of different bottles of Chianti with roosters on the label, I just couldn't enjoy them. Perhaps if I tried a 30 Euro bottle I might like it, but I think that Chianti is just not my kind of wine.

I have made Amarone from a kit here at home and was looking forward to trying the real thing in Italy. However at 17 (or was it 19) Euros a bottle, that experience was not to be had.

Doing some research into wine before I went to Italy I was surprised to find that there is a great deal of white wine produced there. While I generally prefer red wine, when Rory suggested that we give an Italian Pinot Grigio a try I agreed. To my very pleasant surprise it was not dry. So I guess I should just have stuck to whites.

Liana with a monster bottle of cheap wine, (once again displaying my talent for snapping the shutter at a bad time).

Liana's favourite wine is Barbera, a red made in the north-west of Italy. I lugged a bottle of it from Slovenia and it too was pretty dry. When Liana saw Barbera on the shelves in Tuscany she just had to have some. However it turned out to be bubbly. I think we unintentionally ended up with bubbly wine two or three times!

Evidently so much of of the wine that is produced in Italy is consumed within the country they don't have much left to export!

Close to Our Tuscan Home

Our rental was in the province of Tuscany, but in the mountainous north of Tuscany, without any of the views that one normally associates with Tuscany.

Some building in the nearby town of Camaiore. See the light coloured dots on the mountainside in the background? That is the tiny cluster of houses that is Buchignano, where our rental was.

It was a steady uphill climb from Camaiore to our little villa. The last 1.7km was on a one lane road with tight corners. In fact the corners were blind, so that cars honked their horns when approaching a corner, to give notice that they were coming. If you met a car, one had to back up and/or pull over. The amazing thing was that this was always accomplished quickly and relatively easily, without anyone getting angry. I seem to associate Italy with impatient drivers but we saw quite the opposite. Perhaps this was due to the relatively quiet area we were in.

A very blind corner! The road was paved only about 10 yrs ago.

This old Citroen was alongside the road.

And this plant with so many interesting colours. I have no idea what it is, nor if the berries are edible. Can anyone tell me?

One of our dinners. With my inability to take a photo where everyone looks at least normal, I feel that I had better not show many of the pictures I took!

Our meals were often eaten in stages, so this table looks rather bare. Only the brie baked in filo shows there. Wait...weren't we in Italy? Why a French cheese baked in filo, which I think of as being Greek or Turkish? Ask Rory, it was his meal and he chose this. Actually, he wanted to have foods that were only available back in Roman times, so no tomatoes, corn, peppers....many of the foods we associate with Italy. But wait, cheese, butter and wheat were in that dish. Maybe it did apply.

Kent has a food blog and is showing pics of the meals at the International Blog of Food.

It was chestnut harvesting time in Italy and the hills around our rental were full of chestnut trees growing wild.

At first I tried to open a green casing (see the green one on the left), thinking that the chestnut must be inside. You can't imagine how unpleasant a task it is to try to deal with one of those prickly things. But after finally getting one open I realized that the green ones were a waste of time. Simply wait for the casing to mature and open and then the chestnuts will fall to the ground. Sheesh, its so simple when you know how....

I bought a small bag of chestnut flour, which was needed for one of the recipies for Kent's meal - biscotti made entirely from the flour. True to biscotti tradition, it was dipped in a liquid but in this case in was dessert wine called Vin Santo. Delicious!

In France I was given a bottle of an aperitif wine made from chestnuts. I am looking forward to trying it, but I am still in recovery mode from all the wine I consumed on my trip.

Olive harvesting time is November-December in this area. The olives must be black, as the one below, but by far the majority of the olives were still green in late September.

To prepare for harvesting netting is first strung between the trees like a rope, which is how it was in most olive orchards we saw. Closer to harvest time it is laid out on the ground as in the picture above. If you enlarge the picture you should be able to see the netting on the ground, though you have to look on the left side of the photo to see the contrast between the grey dirt and the dirt that looks red, but in fact has netting on it.

Once the olives turn black they are ready to harvest. Evidently there are 4 methods of harvesting, which vary from using a machine to shake the trees to simply letting the olives drop to the ground. Check out this website for further info regarding how it is done.