Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre

(ps this blog is so hard to edit so most of the pictures are at the bottom!!)

           Cinque Terre is the name given to five small former fishing villages on the north western coast of Italy. Most people in my program had already visited them during the beginning of the program, when it was warm, which was probably a good idea. Thus, I was a little worried about rain as Becka, Chelsea and I left very early Saturday morning on the train.
      We arrived in the northern most village of Monte Rosso, and soon discovered why this was supposedly the most popular of the villages. It has the nicest beaches and the most shops and restaurants. Pretty hungry, we stopped in the New Town part of Monte Rosso at the first restaurant that looked tasty. I decided to go with my adventurous streak

 and I ordered a seafood salad. I was expecting a salad with lettuce and some shrimp or crab on top. I was soo wrong. What I got was a plate of tentacles, legs, and different colored meats of unknown fish. However, seeing as how I was in the mood to be adventurous, and that I was paying a lot for this salad, I ate every last tentacle, and I daresay I even enjoyed most of it. After lunch, we realized that it was indeed warm enough to san tan a little, so quickly bought cheap bathing suits and headed for the beach. We spent the rest of the daylight hours putzing and exploring the town, wandering into little shops and climbing to the top of the hill separating the New Town and the Old Town. We got a late dinner, went to a little bar for a beer, and went to bed.

           The next morning we rose bright and early, anticipating a full day of hiking. (If you hadn’t noticed by now we did not space our trip out well .. Spending one full day in one town and cramming the remaining four into the next day.. But it worked out great in the end.)We took a train from Monte Rosso to the southern most town Riomaggiore where we walked around, got some break fast (signature Cinque Terre focaccia bread, SO good) and did all of the normal little touristy things we could do. Then, we commenced the walk from Riomaggiore north to Manarola. This famous was is known as Via Dell’Amore, or lovers way. This is because it was the trail used in the old days by lovers of the two towns to travel from one to the other. An old tradition of Via Dell’Amore has recently been re-popularized by an Italian teenage novel. It is the new fashion to take a lock and lock it somewhere on the road with your lover. There are thousands and thousands of locks on this twenty minute walk from one town to the other. The locks are on fences, nets, walls, and anything that is lockable has been used. We all decided that this was probably much more romantic with a significant other, but still beautiful all the same. When we got to the second town, we followed our same basic routine of wandering around town, taking pictures, and just being tourists. Because there was a landslide, the trail between towns two and three was closed, so we took the convenient five minute train to the third town of Corniglia. We climbed all the way to the top of the hill Corniglia is situated on, and only spent a short while wandering around as we were eager to begin our long hike to the fourth town, Vernazza. The hike to Vernazza was BEAUTIFUL!!! Everywhere I turned was another postcard picture of the Italian coastline, or of Corniglia in the distance. We had such a blast hiking and singing at the top of our lungs some classic american songs. The trail took us about two hours and by the time we reached Vernazza we were famished. After lunch, we decided that there was no way that we were going to say we hiked all the way here didn’t go swimming. So, we threw on our bathing suits behind a rock, and jumped into the harbor much to the astonishment of everyone around the harbor. I know they were thinking “those crazy american girls…” Oh by the way, it was NOT warm that day and it was on the verge of rain the whole time. Still, we had fun splashing about for little before we decided that hypothermia definitely wasn’t worth it and that we should probably get out before we get sick. We grabbed some hot chocolate to thaw ourselves out and grabbed the second to last train to Siena. ( We have learned that it is not a good idea to take the last train running anywhere in Italy because several times we have been stuck somewhere late and had to take really roundabout ways to get home).

     The account of this trip is rather boring (sorry), but the pictures make up for that because they are so stunning!

 

Becka and I in Monte Rosso

Beautiful Place for a Vineyard

Monte Rosso

Riomaggiore



Warm hot chocolate after our swim

The only bit of sunshine we saw that day..

Corniglia

Lucca and Wine :-)

     Ciao i miei amici e mia famiglia!! Mi dispiace molto perche non ho scrito niente per quasi tre settimane!
     Hi friends and family!! I am so sorry I have not written anything in almost three weeks!

Lets pick up where I left off last time…

Top of the Church in Lucca

     The week following Germany was accompanied by a chorus of sniffles and sneezes as almost everyone that went to Germany got sick. This was definitely due to the mixture of cold, rain and lack of sleep. That Thursday I aced my first Italian test ( yay!!) and then decided to stay in Siena for the weekend to rest up and save some money. This is always fine by me because I could wander around Siena or sit in Il Campo all day.. Which I do frequently. Il Campo is now my new favorite place to plop down with a good book and to people watch. It NEVER gets old because the tourists keep it interesting. One thing about people watching here: nothing will ever beat California amusement park people watching because that is where you can find the real crazies, but here is a close second. European fashion is so different, not bad.. But just different. The men especially never cease to take me by surprise. They often sport very white and very tight pants with nice shoes and a pink or purple scarf, and its totally acceptable. Some of them can pull it off quite well, and some.. Well.. Just make me chuckle a bit. I am not trying to make fun of fashion here, but living in California all of my life and being used to t-shirts, board shorts and flip flops makes this 180 difference all the more amusing.

     Siena has become much more vivacious as the tourist season is beginning to end and all of the Italian students that attend the universities here have moved back to attend classes. Now, Il Campo is packed with young people milling about until 4 in the morning whereas before it turned into a bit of a ghost town at about 2.  Along with the students has come the cold weather and the rain, so I finally have to put on my heavy jacket and boots every day. The best thing about the cold though is that I get to wear a scarf EVERYDAY, and if anyone knows me well they know that I love scarves. 

     The week after my lovely relaxing weekend was quite normal, except that I got to go to a winery in Tuscany! It was beautiful and simply breathtaking. It was a little bit bittersweet though because while I was thinking the whole time “ ah yes.. This is why I am studying viticulture” the reality of me having my own Tuscan vineyard and winery is probably not too feasible. However, I will just have to recreate my own Tuscany in California, so when I do you are all invited! Dievole Winery sits nestled in the rolling hills of Tuscany just a half an hour outside of Siena, and I was so pleased with the tour because I actually knew what was going on and I understood the mechanics behind what was explained. I was also very impressed with the GIANT wooden fermentation barrels they used, seeing as one would equal the cost of about half of my college fees and they had at least twenty of them. I left the winery feeling so excited about my course of study, but still very frustrated that I don’t have that internship yet. I bug the director about three times a week and every time it’s the same answer. Italians have a very different sense of time, and its always “ maybe today, maybe tomorrow… who knows? I will ask the guy.” and then I think ‘maybe never :-( ’. Either way, I am glad I at least got to experience one really good winery while I was here.

      On Friday, about thirty of us went to an old Italian town called Lucca. It is very small and quaint and is still surrounded by a fort. We had a wonderful time renting bikes and riding all over town and around the entire wall. My friend Becka and I decided that we would be brave and try the tandem bike. We thought “ hey, we are both from Davis, we can bike with our eyes closed and no hands, this will be a piece of cake.” Two falls, a pole, and a fence later we were eating our words. It took us about ten minutes to finally get the rhythm and the hang of it but once we figured it out we were golden.

    

We then left Lucca and went to a garden where there were several real Italian villas. To say they were beautiful would be an understatement and my pictures do not do them justice. We got to walk around the gardens and villas for several hours. My favorite place we visited is a little bit hard to explain. It was an outdoor party area but it was build for an orchestra and was constructed into a giant semicircle by really tall hedges.  The design was in such a way that it was supposed to be acoustically perfect because back in the day there were obviously no such things as microphones. So, of course, we had to test the theory, and had a great time singing a few popular songs to find that indeed we reverberated throughout the whole area quite easily. However, we were put to shame about five minutes later when a group of Italian tourists came along a erupted in a song that was so loud I am surprised you guys didn’t hear it?!?

Faraway View of a Villa

Me at a villa

     Other features of the villas included HUGE outdoor showers literally as big as an apartment, and huge ponds/swimming pool/ bodies of water with statues and fountains galore. Many people still use the places for vacation.. Not a bad place to relax for a while. We returned to Siena later that evening and went straight to sleep to prepare for the rest of the weekend.

     The next morning Chelsea, Becka and I woke up very early to go to Cinque Terre. Read my next blog to find out about that adventure!!

( This blog is really difficult to edit so I put most of my pictures here at the bottom, so just scroll down to view them! )



This is a mushroom! I have never seen one like this...





Becka and I at a Villa




Huge Pool/Pond Type Thing at a Villa in Lucca





A Wee Little Wine Grape



Future Home??

The wooden barrels I was impressed with

Oktoberfest and Munich, Germany

Ciao tutti!

     It has been a while since my first post and I am sorry for the delay! There has been so much I have been up to I have hardly had any down time. Between school and travel I have been quite the busy bee.

Where to begin!? The weekend after my first post was our trip to Germany. Thirty people from UC Siena went with a program to Munich Germany for the famous beer festival, Oktoberfest. We left on a bus at midnight from Florence, Italy, drove all through the night, and arrived in the morning very tred but excited in Munich Germany.

Our accommodations consisted of two person camping tents at a campsite run by a bunch on consistently slightly inebriated Australians. That in itself was entertaining. We quickly settled in, threw on some fresh clothes,and headed off to the festival. That first day was incredibly fun. No one had any issues getting into any of the tents and the weather was great.

Some friends and I all sat amidst thousands of people and drank fine German beer, sang songs we had no idea of the meaning to, and socialized with people from all over the world. I had REAL pretzels ( amazing ) and even ventured to try a bratwurst ( also amazing ). We sang and danced into the night and returned to our tents for some much needed sleep. Unfortunately, the next day was not as successful. We were a little bit late getting up, even though 8:00 is not late by my standards, and found ourselves unable to get into any of the tents at Oktoberfest. We had the pleasure of standing outside in the rain for several hours, only to make it to the door and have an extremely angry German man, whose blood pressure was probably through the roof, all of a sudden claim that they were not letting anyone else in and to “ECSIT NAAWWHHH!” Fun. Not.

We ended up wandering around the festival, buying new sweatshirts we didn’t want just so we could have some dry clothes, and returning to the campsite early to thaw ourselves and visit with other travelers.

The upside is that I managed to steel an authentic German beer stein ( the first and probably only thing I will ever steal!! Don’t tell!! I thought one was hard enough to sneak out, so imagine my surprise when some of my friends returned with as many as seven in tow!)
     The third day in Munich, some friends and I decided to go visit the Concentration Camp Memorial in Dachau. That was a very depressing and sobering experience. We did a self guided tour, that really turned into us splitting up and wandering all over the camp. We walked through the torture and interrogation rooms, the baracks, and the hospital. We stood in the gas chambers and the crematorium where thousands and thousands of people were murdered. It is one thing to read about the holocaust and study it in texts, but being in a place where such tragedies occurred put everything into a completely different context. My most resounding thought the whole time I was there was “how could one human being do this to another?” Visiting the concentration camp was a very dark insight to the lack of humanity that exists in this world. I left the camp angry, frustrated, and sad, but still grateful that I was able to visit a real concentration camp at least once in my life.
     After the camp we realized we were cutting it close on time. We took two buses and a train back to the campsite and had just enough time to throw everything in a bag and snatch the last seats on the bus back to Siena. We returned at one in the morning exhausted and happy to be home.