James & Vilija

Hi all,
This is my first attempt at a blog post I’ve decided to treat this a little as a journal and a little as a letter back home so please forgive any ramblings!

Its not yet been a week and yet so much has happened. I arrived in Italy last Wednesday (6 days ago). My first taste of Italy was an introduction as to how things work around here. I arrived at Rome airport, found the gate from which I was to depart for Genova, then decided to ring James to announce my safe arrival. One of the fist things James asked me was how I found passport control. I said that I figured that I would go through that in Genova as I didn’t go through customs. He asked if I’d shown my passport to anyone, yes one cop briefly glanced at the front cover of my British passport, “well, you’ve passed passport control”!?!?!!!

As I mentioned in my previous post Genova is a beautiful city! There are so many gorgeous buildings painted with beautiful frescos, some restored, others still original. I guess the one and only similarity to Melbourne is that there are so many small streets and alleyways that beg to be explored. It is in these that all of the best shops are to be found, whether a gourmet deli or a leather shop. Hold me back, there are so many cool hangbags!!! I still have too much of the city to see and I’m sure that I will tell you more about it in the future, suffice to say that I will enjoy living here.

On Friday night my friend Cathy (from work) came to visit. She’s in Europe for a friend’s wedding and is doing some exploring of her own before-hand. James, the now seasoned expert on the Ligurian coastline took Cathy and I on a tour of some of the most beautiful places over the weekend. The weather put on a show for us with perfect weather for both sightseeing, hiking and swimming on both days. Saturday was an introduction to the Portofino coastline. We started with a lazy swim at Camogli “town of housewives”. This is a beautiful town not too spoilt by tourism, where the locals like to go for a swim. The number of beautifully thin and tanned bodies was amazing and made me feel rather fluorescent in my white skin. After a relaxing dip in the Mediterranean and a gelato we moved on briefly to Santa Margheritta (will actually have to spend some time there next time) and on to Protofino, the playground of the rich and richer. Here we spied some paparazzi, it was someone’s wedding, but the bouncers in the castle where the reception was taking place wouldn’t let us in keep an eye out for trash magazines and let me know if you can work out who’s it was!! I also got my first pair of leather sandals People watching was an experience unto itself. It was spot the dodgy car rather than spot the expensive one. We lost count after 10 Porsche Cayennes (sp?), a bunch of boxters and carreras, a Bentley and more Mercs and BMW’s than you can poke a stick at. To say that all of the boats moored in the harbour were impressive would be an understatement. We also spied a church which would be perfect for next may “want that one!” (Little Britain style)

Sunday was a new adventure. The Italian train system is notoriously late and so with two minutes to go before our train was supposed to depart for Cinque Terre we were surprised to see it pulling off from the station. Well not deterred and perhaps inspired somewhat by Indiana Jones we made a run for it and jumped on to the moving train, ignoring the unintelligible ramblings of the train conductor, pulled open the doors and clambered inside high on an adrenaline rush. We were on our way

My initial impression as we entered Monterosso, the western-most town of the Cinque Terre, was one of mild disappointment. Perhaps spoilt by the previous day’s excursion to Camogli and Portofino I was somewhat disillusioned by the numerous souvenir stores that affronted me when I got off the train. What is supposed to be one of the jewels of Liguria seemed to be a tacky tourist attraction. None the less we started our walk through the town itself then on to Vernazza, the second of the towns. It was along this path that I finally saw the beauty that Cinque Terre has to offer. The walk took us up and down some reasonably steep steps that wound their way around large hills and valleys, and along some narrow paths, the ever-present blackberry bushes waiting to break our fall. Although you don’t need to be terribly fit to do the walk you do need a moderate level of fitness so Mama, start practicing now

Vernazza was a pretty town and provided a lovely beach on which to sit and eat our lunch consisting of foccacia and more foccacia (and of course gelati!). We saw plenty of locals with skin so tanned they looked like they should be sent to a tannery. The sun was pretty bright and the day was certainly hot as we made our way towards Corgnlia, the final of the three towns we saw. Again the walk was beautiful with the Mediterranean calmly stretched out in front of us, and olive groves to the other side. As our walk hit about the half way mark we saw a sign pointing us towards a “free beach”. In Italy many of the beaches are private, owned by hotels or restaurants where anyone can go so long as they pay. The free beach sounded great! We bush-bashed our way through a reasonably well-trodden, but none-the-less overgrown path, down (at times) steep slopes and about 20 minutes later found the free beach, with an additional sign indicating that it was a “naturalist beach”. What the hell!? Tops off (pants on) we had our second dip in the beautiful waters of the Italian Mediterranean, under the watchful eye of a dodgy bloke in a house above. House above? There was another way of getting there?? We went to take the shortcut back once we realised one existed only to be told by the pervy bloke that it would cost us 7 euro. Bugger that! We bush bashed back up to the top from where we had come and made it to Cornglia for the 7.30-ish train. This time we were not surprised to find that our connecting train to get back to Genova was running 15 minutes late. No more Indiana Jones moments.

Yesterday I started my first Italian lesson. I was thrown in to a class that had 40 hours of Italian lessons up their sleeves relative to me which was a little overwhelming, but after today, I’m feeling a little better about it.

So my first impressions of Italy? Beautiful countryside, generous people, speedos (eeek! What a fashion crime! They’re everywhere!). I still can’t decide what the youth of Italy like better, smoking, or public displays of affection (PDA). Finally, the new motto which I must learn to adopt “piano, piano” (slowly, slowly) as nothing here happens very fast at all!

VJ

For more photos from our adventures with Cathy, click here

Tags: Camogli, Cinque Terra, Portofino, Santa Margherita

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.