Venice

 I feel Happiest When I'm showing you my original Emails . This one was from Venice.

From: Hicken, Garry
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2011 12:45 PM
Subject: Venice, The city of canals

  Buon Giorno

 I am a slave to my moods and right now my mood is sadness. We are coming to the end of our second week in Italy which is cause for sadness on its’ own. But what seems even worse is that we are leaving Venice. A friend of mine once told me that Venice was his favourite city in the world and when he said it, I thought it was a pretty dramatic statement. I almost never get attached to a location, be it town, city or country. But after only 2 days in Venice I can now come closer to understanding my friends’ rationale. While I don’t think I would ever choose to live in Venice, (I would miss my garden, the expanse around my hometown of Ajax and a ton of other things that come with living in Canada), I will say that I could spend a few months in Venice getting lost in the maze of streets and alleys, sitting in the various cafes and restaurants, and soaking up all the atmosphere. Venice is not a City;  It’s a feeling, an emotion. It’s a cool sprinkle of rain on a very hot day or your first sip of a cold drink when you’ve just finished some hard physical exertion.

 You start walking through Venice looking for some particular landmark and something catches your eye. A statue or building, perhaps a menu posted outside of a café or an artisan working in one of the countless number of craft shops around the city. Then an hour or so later you realize that you are no closer to reaching your intended destination than when you left your hotel room and what is even stranger is that you just don’t care. Venice, the city itself trapped you. It is the destination, not the various sights to see or all the landmarks. Venice itself, the entire city is a sight to amaze and no matter where you are or what you see, it’s all fabulous. Upon having said that there are some things that I would recommend seeing if you can find them. The Basilica di San Marco is unbelievable as is the Palazzo Ducale.  Crossing the Rialto Bridge which is also a marketplace,

was memorable and taking a boat to Murano Island was also unbelievably cool. I’m sure we missed a ton of things and you could probably spend months exploring the city and still find something new every day, but I will end this email with one piece of advice if you are going to Venice. Set aside at least one day to wander around the streets with absolutely no destination in mind. Get lost. Stop to eat when you are hungry.  Watch a glass blower make a vase. See if you can get to one of the mask shops where one of the craftsmen or women is making masks by hand. Soak everything in. Joani and I both agreed that if we could plan this vacation again, we would devote more time to Venice. We may have to come back and get lost again.  Again I hope you enjoy the pictures. There is a photo of Joana in  front of the Basilica looking as carefree as I’ve ever seen her

and then the rest are of the canals because obviously Venice is the city of canals.

The last one is actually showing a large boat making a delivery to a grocery store via canal. 

  Very cool.

Ciao Venice. I will miss you.

Next stop Assisi

Garry

Lucca into Cinque Terra

Lucca to Cinque Terre

So the type of Eurorail pass that we bought allowed us to travel any ten days in the duration of our stay in Italy.  As soon as we validated our ticket on any given day we were allowed to get on and off trains as many times as we wanted for the day.  This allowed us to plan and execute what was one of our most exciting days in Italy.  We got up early in the morning and had breakfast in our hotel in Lucca, immediately took a 40 minute train ride to Pisa, where we spent the morning site seeing.  We ate lunch in Pisa and then jumped on another train for the one hour trip to La Spezia.  It only took 10 minutes on a local train to get from La Spezia to Riomaggiore.

  We were checked in approximately 3 pm and still had a day and a half in Cinque Terre. 

The main attraction for most people visiting Cinque Terre (including us) is the prospect of hiking the trails between the five villages.  We very quickly learned that the trail between the second and third villages was washed out from a recent storm, but this was okay because it was one of the lesser hikes.  So the plan for this day was to take the trail "Via Dell'Amore" (Lovers' Lane)

which is approximately a half hour trek between Riomaggiore and Manarola.  This was a beautiful, very easy, stroll in the park which led us to wonder why our research had warned us how tough it would be to do the five-village hike.  We spent two enjoyable hours exploring Manarola,

headed back to our hotel having already covered one section of the trail and two towns, ready for dinner and feeling enthusiastic about the next day.
The next morning we got up, had breakfast, and knowing that the trail between towns two and three was washed out, decided the best plan of action was to take the train to the fifth town, hike back from five, to four and four to three, which would allow us to see all five towns and hike three of the four portions of the trail.  The first part of our hike was from Monteresso, The beach town.

to Vernazza.  According to the internet this first trail was the toughest hike, but we were still feeling flush from the easy section we had hiked yesterday, and started off feeling extremely confident.

Just like this guy, who hung out just outside of town.

According to what we read, we could do this hike in an hour and a half, and being as we were both runners we thought we wouldn't take much longer than that.  Have you ever heard the phrase "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"?  Call us fools if you will.  By the time we were a quarter of the way into the trail we were already hot, sweaty, scratched, and feeling completely betrayed by our own enthusiasm.  The elevation changes were more than we imagined and the rocks and sand we were hiking on were continually shifting and sliding from under our feet.

 Although most of the trail had a fence between us and the drop off to the water, occasionally we would come upon portions high or low where the fence was washed or eroded away.

  And I can tell you, when you look down to your right and your looking at a drop anywhere from 100 to 200 feet, to waves crashing over jagged rocks, it's quite unnerving.  At one point, we encountered a woman coming in the opposite direction who was clearly as nervous as we were.  We had to pass each other in a very narrow section, and it was clear that the other woman could not bring herself to leave the mountain side of the path. So we had to pass along the drop-off side of the path.  Joani asked me if I could take her hand while she stepped around the other woman.  The woman, hearing, "Please take my hand", offered her hand to Joani - two shaking sweaty hands grasping each other in hopes of not falling.
With relief we reached the next town safely and stopped for lunch.

  I knew how tough that had been for Joani so after lunch I told her "I know that was tough, hot, sweaty, and scary, and I understand if you don't want to continue, but I have to take the trail as far as I can, so if you want to board the train in this town and meet me at the last town I understand."  But my wife, being the trooper that she is, made it very clear that if I was going to continue hiking this trail, she was going to be with me every step of the way. So we made our way to the entrance of the trail from Vernazza to Corniglia.
 Now this Hike was rated not quite as dangerously tough as the previous one but considered more physically demanding. My quads and calves were already sore from the morning hike so I wasn't sure how it was going to be worse, but in hind sight I can tell you easily. Vernazza was a port on the sea while Corniglia was a town up in the mountains. We climbed up, up, and then up some more.

Then we climbed down a bit and up some more . It continued up and down for almost two hours and then at the end, for good measure we climbed these stairs.

 Just for good measure, most of the steps were loose stones just set lightly in place, so you never had real good footing. I am always telling Joani that I feel the most alive when there's a little bit of danger added into our adventures and I'll tell you honestly, I felt extremely alive this entire day. We got into Corniglia

in the late afternoon, were happy to have a little sit down, get a cool drink and rest from our hike. All in all, it was a terrific day.
 On a more somber note, we hiked the trail in April 2011 and in October 2011 the region had the worst landslides in recorded times. Vernazza and Monteresso were hardest hit and devastated.They have been slowly recovering over the last 6-7 years and there are still parts of the path closed.
 Even so, I would still recommend visiting as these are some of the most beautiful seaside towns you'll ever see. Just don't visit in the rainy season.
 The next day it was on to Venice but Oh did I love Cinque Terra!

Further into Tuscany

Further into Tuscany

  Florence is the capital of the Tuscany region and considered one of the most beautiful cities not just in Italy but the whole world. It is home to the Accademia, and the Uffizi gallery,

where you can see the Statue of David by Michelangelo as well as the Birth of Venus  by Botticelli. We went to both, but didn't get photos because neither gallery allowed cameras. Both are must sees if you go to Florence.

                    www.accademia.org/                           www.uffizi.org/

 I do have this shot of a copy of the statue of David that stands outside of the Palazzo Vecchio. Not as cool as the original but you get the idea.

The Ponte  Vecchio 

is also very historic and as you are going across it, the sense of history is almost overwhelming. When you cross over, from the Gallery side to the south side you immediately come to another amazing Gelateria  that gives you cones where the Gelato is shaped like flowers. As if the flavor was not enticement enough.

 The best place to see all of Florence is at the Piazzale Michelangelo, a hill on the south bank of the river.

 Everything comes into view with a panoramic setting highlighting The Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio. There are several flights of stairs

to this vantage point, but there is another copy of the Statue of David rewarding you at the top.

 When we left Florence we worked our way to the coast. Remember all this time we were toting backpacks, it was a very strenuous vacation. We spent one day in the town of Lucca, a town famous for it's defensive walls that, no longer , needed for military defense, (keeping out my wife?)

became parkland promenades.

  It was a cool little stopover on our way to the coast and something else that caught my eye was the Guinigi Tower

 famous as you can see for it's tower top garden. Catches the eye wherever you are in Town.

 We left  Lucca the next morning and spent a half day in Pisa to see......

 yes that is my Joani holding up the leaning Tower of Pisa. My wife, the saviour of historical buildings and my hero. For sure the focal point in Pisa is the tower, and I will tell you that it is worth taking some time for this building! It is made of beautiful pink marble and the lean is remarkable. If you're like me, when you stand staring at it for any length of time you will notice that you start leaning like the building to compensate. Quite a sight. We left Pisa late in the day headed for La Spezia where we were catching a train to Cinque Terra. A story for another day.

Tuscany

 Tuscany

 Our trip through Italy will be a mishmash of Emails that didn't get lost and stories told from memories. The next installment is the original email including the date it was sent.

From: Hicken, Garry
Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2011 4:42 PM
Subject: Old towns

Hello all

 I would like to give you my idea of irony . It’s Saturday night ,I’m in Florence , one of the cultural capitals of the world . Art , culture , sophistication . Love ( amour ) is everywhere . At 6:10 in the evening Joani and I are sitting ……wait for it….. in a Laundromat washing our clothes . Now seriously ,is that irony or what ? Just so you know I am not a complete loser I will tell you that I am taking Joani out for a nice dinner later ,but we both thought that the other patrons in the restaurant would appreciate if we showed up in clean clothing. But this email is not to talk about Florence because I haven’t told you about our adventures in the land of Towers and Billy goats . To be more exact, San Gimignano and Certaldo . Our hotel for our time there was in Certaldo , which as it turned out was a booking error on our part . All along we meant only to visit San Gimignano . This is a very small but renowned town in central Tuscany, famous for their medieval towers that were some of the only ones of their kind left standing after the bombings of WWII .But when we booked with Hotels .com we specified that we wanted to be within one kilometer of the train station . What we didn’t know was that there was no train station in San Gimignano . The closest train station was in Certaldo .When we saw this while booking we just thought it was a suburb. Wrong!! We got to Certaldo only to find that the buses only ran between the two towns at morning and evening rush hour . We only had the one day planned and we couldn’t wait for the evening bus and even if we did we wouldn’t get back. The hotel concierge suggested a Taxi and told us she would call and get a cost. We found out it would cost us 40 euro ( 60 Canadian ) for a two way taxi trip which was costly considering the train ride from Siena only cost us 7 euro. Well you can understand our cause for pause. The concierge was very nice and told us that instead, we could just take a trip into the older part of Certaldo which was also very old but less touristy and why don’t we consider that  while we unpacked and cleaned up and if we still wanted to go to San Gimignano she would call us a taxi. When we got to the room Joani ( who remains the best wife a man could have) said ,why spend 40 euro, Certaldo would probably be just as good . On the other hand I thought that San Gimignano was one of the things that she had found out about when we were first planning Italy ,I knew she really wanted to see the medieval towers and 40 euro was just about what we would have paid for an airport Limo . So when we went to the lobby I said to Joani .” I don’t think we’ll be back in Italy anytime soon “ And asked the concierge to call us a cab. While we were waiting for our taxi, this nice concierge explained that if we were not leaving too early in the morning , we could spend the evening exploring San Gimignano, and in the morning, see the old part of Certaldo . Apparently we could walk the whole town in 2 or 3 hours .We had a plan .The taxi driver showed up and turned out to be another very nice person who tried in broken English to give us some information about the countryside as we drove along and at the gates to Certaldo promised us that he would be back promptly at 9:30 pm to pick us up at the same gate . I might have worried about whether or not he intended to return except for the fact that he wouldn’t accept any money for the trip there.

 From the minute we walked beyond Porto San Mateo, the entry gate into the town we were thankful we had come . We were immediately transported into what was a magical town with small streets ,roadside cafes , and of course the aforementioned towers .The tallest one was open to the public , and we spent 15 minutes climbing 20 or more flights of stairs to the top of this tower .The last part of the climb was a ladder that went through a tiny little hole just slightly wider than my shoulders which opened into  a bell tower room with an incredible view of the whole town . Joani and I both have vertigo so you can imagine how tough it was .But the feeling of conquest and amazing view made it well worthwhile .

 We topped the day off with an amazing dinner at an outdoor café ran by two sisters that we chatted with , Joani exchanging dessert recipes with one, while the other gave me a couple of postcards with an actual picture of the café and one of the sisters out front waiting a table. It was a magical day , the taxi driver showed up promptly at 9:30pm as promised and when he dropped us safely off at our hotel , I never even gave a second thought of whether it was worth the 40 euro taxi ride. On   the contrary ,with his extreme friendliness and promptness as well as feeling flush from having such an amazing day ,I  tipped him another 5 euro and we went to our room wondering what magic tomorrow would bring .

I know this email is getting long, you’re getting bored, and our laundry is almost done so I will keep the story of Certaldo short .

 We woke up in the morning knowing that we had a few hours to kill after breakfast because our train ride to Florence would only take 40 minutes and we couldn’t check in before 2 pm . So we decided to follow through with our plan to visit the upper old town . Now what I haven’t told you is that it is called the upper old town for a reason .The lower town is called the newer part because it had only been settled since the 1700’s ! (Imagine , over three hundred years old here is still considered recent and not worth considering.) There actually is a tram you can ride to the old town sort of like a ski lift ,for a reason . Old town was built on a mountaintop . But as most of you know ,both Joani and I have ran marathons so we weren’t scared . We should have been !  Halfway up we were both panting and wondering what we had got ourselves into. What a climb .No shortage of exercise since we got to Italy . But again it was so worth it .This was another very old town with narrow streets , small alleys , hidden doorways and family crests everywhere . But unlike the other 2 we had been to , this one was almost completely untouched by tourism . Original families still lived in old houses that would have been turned into tourist shops in the other towns we had visited .We were walking along constantly seeing people out sweeping their front stoops and tending their gardens ,looking at us as if we aliens . Of course we were foreigners walking by the front of their houses . In some ways I imagine it would be great living in a town 1000 years old . But the constant parade of people walking by, staring into your backyards and kitchen windows like voyeurs must be a little wearing if you were born and brought up there and this was the only home you ever knew. We spent a few hours walking around this old town in amazement , negotiated our way back down the mountain to our hotel , Checked out and caught the next train to Florence . Our original booking error that put us overnight into a hotel in a town we never would have heard of, turned out to be a very pleasant mistake . We ended up exploring 2 medieval towns for the price of one and got some serious exercise to boot . But the way it is going  I will be going back to work to rest from my vacation. The photos are all of Certaldo and San Gimignano ,but in no particular order . It's a guessing game . Can you spot the difference ?

Next stop Florence

Arrivederci

Garry

Sienna Part 2

Sienna

  I want to start by saying that Sienna is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to. It has history, charm, character,  and tons of other things that you would enjoy seeing if you visited. But I want to give you a serious warning if you do intend to visit. It is the most confusing of places I've ever visited when you are trying to get around. Someone once described the streets of Sienna to me in this way. It's as if someone took a pot of boiled spaghetti noodles, threw them up in the air and however they landed on the floor it was decided that, that would be the street plan for Sienna.
https://www.italyguides.it/en/tuscany/siena/interactive-map-of-siena#43.3184914/11.3362211/17/cats/100
 You can get lost within the first 5 minutes of entering Sienna and once you do you'll stay lost unless you get the help of someone who lives there. You can wander around for the rest of your day without ever knowing where you are or how to get to where you want to go.
 Now upon saying that, roaming around Sienna with no idea where you are is fun as long as you have no set agenda and time table. Around every corner is something worth seeing,

there are always marvelous gelato shops if you run out of energy,

and all roads eventually lead to Piazza Del Campo, even if they don't seem like roads we are used to in North America.

the center of town, the main place to eat, shop, see or be seen.

We had the most marvelous lunch on the Piazza, unbelievable pizza by the slice,as well as wine served by the glass that we just took out to the center of the plaza, sat down on the cobblestones and ate and drank while watching children and adults play and sight see.

 We spent an entire day wandering around Sienna almost always completely lost. For most of the day this was fine, but towards the end of the day it got a little frustrating. As the time got later, we talked about heading back to the hotel, having our supper in our hotel restaurant and packing to get ready for the next part of our Italy adventure.
 Now I consider myself someone who can navigate around anywhere. Most times I have an internal compass that guides me around and I almost never feel lost, so it is with extreme reluctance and more than a little frustration that I admit, I was hopelessly lost in Sienna.
 I was armed with a street map and when Joani told me she thought it was time to head back to our hotel, I also felt a little tired and agreed so started trying  to find our way back to the bus stop that would take us back to our hotel.
 I referred to the map, got my bearings, turned several corners and got us more lost! Undaunted, I sat down on a bench, again opened up the map, studied it intently, told Joani, "okay, I'm good" and preceded to get us even more lost!!. After several more attempts, Joani suggested we ask someone for help. A direct stab at my male pride. "No dear, I can do this, I think I now know where we are, and it's just around a couple of more corners." After more than an hour or two of trying to find ourselves, Joani, who by this time was getting extremely hungry finally found a young university student who seemed to enjoy trying out her command of the English language, was only too happy to guide us out.
 I followed behind very disgruntled. " I could have found the way out"  Joani had a lovely chat with this pleasant { smartypants } girl. I considered veering off and trying to find my own way but the thought of having Gelato for supper, and maybe even next mornings breakfast was a little daunting. I still think, given a little more time ( 2 or 3 days) I could have found our way out of the Maze.
 Sienna was lovely but a little hard on my Ego.

Sienna Part 1

 Sienna countryside


 We spent a couple of fabulous, exciting days in Rome and then we started an amazing trip around Italy. Our first trip to Europe and we were armed with absolutely no knowledge of how things worked over there. Although we had a Eurorail pass, lesson #1 was ; we couldn't take a train to Sienna. Buses only thank you very much. While this made no sense to us, we really wanted to see Sienna so there was nothing for it, but to sling our backpacks over our shoulders and head for the bus terminal. The bus trip itself was uneventful but finding our hotel in Sienna was a real adventure.  When we got off the bus we couldn't find anyone who spoke English  and our Italian was limited to a few phrases, so we wandered around with our packs on our backs on a fairly warm day with absolutely no success for at least 1/2 an hour. We finally found a bench where I got Joani to sit down and guard all of our belongings while I wandered for another 20 minutes looking down every street for our Hotel and trying to find anyone that spoke English, all to no avail.
 Finally hot, tired and worn out I went back to where I had left Joani only to find out she had met a very nice couple 2 minutes after I had left her who showed her where our hotel was and she had been waiting the rest of the time for me to return! Turns out the hotel was only 2 blocks from the busstop but nestled in among tall Cyprus trees with a winding driveway you couldn't see from the road.
 Only the first amongst many times we were partially, or totally lost in Italy.
 It was late in the evening and we had a guided tour of the countryside booked for the next day so we had dinner and retired early for what was probably the best night's sleep we had since we left Canada.
 The next morning we were picked up at our Hotel by Roberto, the owner, manager and chief guide of "Tours by Roberto". We had been promised Castles, Monasteries, Medieval towns and Wineries and couldn't wait. Roberto did not disappoint.

  We did not see castles the size of Buckingham palace but what we did see were cool for us regardless.

Every building was older than anything we would see in Canada. The  Medieval town he took us to was like something out of a storybook,

and the monastery had a religious order of monks that we only saw through windows and archways.

We had a picnic lunch outside on top of a hill in the Tuscan countryside, waited on by an elderly woman who served us cheeses, salamis, pastramis and breads that she and her family had made themselves, as well, we drank homemade wine.

It felt almost dreamlike, something you might see in a movie and even though we normally never eat red meat, we ate some of everything. We were interested in trying all these homemade foods and the last thing we wanted to do was offend this elderly woman who almost immediately was won over by my wife. Joani manages to win over everyone she meets sooner or later. In this instance she got up from the table and started helping the woman serve the lunch and even though this older Italian lady seemed mortified that a guest help serve, Joani insisted and by half way through our meal it began to seem as if the woman had adopted Joani as her daughter. When the meal was over the woman packed up all the leftover meats, cheeses, and breads in paper and gave them to Joani as takeout! We had snacks for the rest of the day. It's not for nothing that I have married the nicest woman in the world!!
 In the Afternoon we went for our wine tour. Roberto took us to a winery that concentrated on the main grape of the region Sangiovese, used to make Brunello Di Montalcino.
http://en.abbadiardengapoggio.it/
  We spent most of the afternoon with the owners, Father and son, of the winery and while the son ran the winery, the father was the storyteller/entertainer, all spoken in Italian and translated by Roberto.

We were treated to a small meal of bread and antipasto while we tasted wines. We were supposed to try 4 different wines, but the father seemed to be enchanted with Joani and we ended up trying everything in the wine cellar including something that had an alcohol content that made me think of moonshine. When we we were leaving we took a couple of bottles with us

and I was feeling quite tipsy and ready for a nap.
 It was late afternoon by the time Roberto got us back to the hotel and we were as I previously stated, very happy with the day we had, but tired and basically planned an early evening dinner and bedtime as tomorrow we would be heading into Sienna to explore what turned out to be one of  our favourite places in Italy.

Rome

Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 4:45 PM
Subject: Rome was not built in a day...but we saw it that way

 Buongiorno

 Come stai? Bene,grazie! L’italia e un paese meraviglioso. Did I fool you ? I am not picking up Italian that fast . Not even close . We are navigating our way around over here with a book of phrases that I borrowed from to write that first line. Hand signals also help as the Italians seem to talk almost as much with their hands as their mouth . Mostly we depend on patience and the fact that the people working in the tourist sections of the areas we are in to help us as they mostly speak better English than we do Italian . I’d tell you what I wrote above but if you really want to know .Google translate for the fun of it. 

   We Flew out of Amsterdam Saturday at 6pm and arrived in Rome approx.. 8:30, tired,sleepy,travel weary ,but still unbelievably keyed up. The bus ride from the airport into Rome central where we were staying was a blur,but our hotel was right across from the bus station. We arrived safely ,dropped off our luggage ,and agreed that since we hadn’t slept in close to 48 hours the best thing would be to try to get a late dinner and then go back to the hotel and get some sleep.  We found a quaint restaurant with a distinctly talian feel to it 4 doors up from our hotel. Had a lovely dinner served to us by a Russian waiter!,and went to our room for a nap.

  We woke up the next morning determined to see as much of Rome as time and energy would allow .Now any of you that know me well, know that I can be very energetic when the situation calls for it and on my first day in Rome adrenaline was high so you can imagine the plight poor Joani was in .At all points in time during the run of the day she was trying to rein in what probably felt to her like a ten year old hyperactive child who had just drank 2 cans of coca cola and ate a pound of gummi bears ! I was hyped to say the least .

We saw the Collisseum (Flavia amphitheatre )

Forum ,Palatine hills,

Arch of Constantine,

Circus Maximus,Pantheon,

Teatro Marcellus,

Trevi Fountain,

Bocca della veritas

and the Spanish steps.

I am glad that woman loves me because I almost wore her out on the first day in Italy. But what a day .I felt guilty about Joani but at the same time exhilarated . On our return to Rome we have another 2 days to see the Vatican and any other sights we missed . Poor Joani !

Next stop Tuscany region . Gotta get off those gummi bears.

 Garry