Surely, visiting Italy would be like a homecoming. My somewhat thin Italian bloodlines would come rushing to the surface and I would be recognized and embraced by my fellow Italians as they cried out “Mamma Mia! What took you so long! Welcome home!”
You see, I was no longer the blonde, fair-skinned woman that left Canada in June.
I was now a blonde, olive-skinned woman. The kind of woman whose hair is naturally brunette and dyed blonde for reasons of fashion. The kind of woman who slathers on olive oil in the sun and has spent the last three decades eating pasta and swimming in the Mediterranean. I looked Italian. As Italian as antipasto, artigiano gelato, or one-year-old Pecorino cheese.
This may be a bit of an exaggeration.
In reality, I looked about as Italian as vegetarian prosciutto. But for the first time in my life, I HAD A TAN. Despite slathering on 30+ sunblock everyday my skin had darkened. In the past, I had only ever burned. It doesn’t take more than morning sunlight reflecting off a stainless steel kitchen sink to turn me a lobster shade of red. But finally, after a month and a half in Spain and Turkey, I had a tan.
We excitedly met up with my sister Suzy in Milan (despite my tan, she was still able to recognize me) and we took a train to Cinque Terre on the West coast. The five villages of Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore are all connected by walking trails... and, they are beautiful. Postcard-pretty towns with colorful houses lining steep inclines, perched on top of rocky seaside cliffs, or overlooking terraced vineyards and lemon groves.
Vernazza
Corniglia
Manarola
View from the walk between Riomaggiore and Manarola.
Riomaggiore
This cart is what farmers use to lug stuff up and down the tracks that run along the terraced hillside farms.
One day we rented a boat and Shane, now fully recovered from our last boat experience ferried us up and down the coastline. We took breaks to swim in the open water (which was weirdly terrifying for all of us) and tested out the underwater features of Suzy’s camera.
Each night at sunset we would walk down to the water and Shane and Suzy would share a bottle of red wine and I would nurse a hot chocolate (hey, it cools down at night!)
The crowd at sunset.
Our accommodations were spotless and we loved our terrace looking over the quaint main drag of Riomaggiore. We looked out over the produce markets and restaurants and watched the fat cats about town sleeping in the shade.
Yes, we enjoyed all the romantic elements of Riomaggiore. But we also enjoyed less romantic things…like the pod-coffee machine in our room. We had heard from fellow travelers that they were all the rage in Europe but had yet to experience one. And now here we were left unattended with one in our room!
We felt like we were eight years old and had just unwrapped an Easy Bake oven. Except “You can bake a cake with a lightbulb?” was now “You can make coffee with a pod?”
And the verdict from Shane and Suzy (the only coffee drinkers in the trio) is, “better than drip, worse than hand-pulled.”
The Duomo in Milan.
Marizpan "seafood" in Milan. We saw this right after we visited a deli with 3200 kinds of Parmigiano.
you are bloggeriffic!!!!
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