I'm a few days/cities behind, so apologies to both readers.
Wednesday morning we left Parma FOREVER. Though we were actually sad to leave, Liza will not miss the process of getting out of the city...it's a constant hassle and I'm pretty sure we have about 5 tickets coming our way. While looking for potential wineries, we discovered that Cinque Terre is not that far away, and since I've never been, it would make a nice little excursion. So off we drove to the coast. Our first stop was the first of the five towns, Riomaggiore. It was here that our gas light came on. We parked and made our way down to the start of the first part of the trail, known as lovers lane. What an ideal spot to continue our pre-Valentines Day vacation. We had a wonderful walk down the coastline to Manarolo, where we caught the train to Vernazza,* which is Rick Steves' favorite city in his favorite destination in all of Italy. The city was hit very hard by some mudslides in 2011 (sidebar - less than a month after Liza last visited. Coincidence!?) and, in the classic Italian way, they are still recovering. We had an awesome lunch at the marina, including anchioves three ways, pesto on trofie pasta (pesto is the signature dish of this area), and a seafood spaghetti.
At lunch, the most irritating humans alive were sitting directly across from me. They are this year's "browns." I could barely focus on Liza because I was so intent on listening to the terrible stories they were telling the random hikers they'd met after missing the train. It was a train wreck. A wonderful train wreck. After lunch we hopped back on the train, headed back to Riomaggiore, and then drove back inland to continue the journey.*
*Okay, so actually very little of this is true. Lovers Lane was closed so we drove to Vernazza and back. All with the gas light on because there are no gas stations in that area. I like saying we ran out of gas. Liza does not. BUT OH MY THE ADVENTURE!
As we laid out our trek home, one thing became unfortunately clear...that we'd have to drive right past Pisa. And, that f-ing sucked because it meant we had to turn in and go see the leaning tower. Terrible. Such an inconvenience. Then again, maybe not...
The guidebooks all say that too many tourists pay attention only to the tower (which was leaning from the start, BTW), and not the other amazing buildings in the "Field of Miracles." We were also those tourists. One track mind - get a baller photo, and get the hell out of there. Those other buildings seemed pretty nice as we walked around to find the best vantage point. Possibly my favorite part was the row of eight ambulances parked at the exit of the Duomo that, shortly after our arrival, were swarmed with the elderly as they emerged from services. It was like playing a really sad game of dodge ball.
Once we were satisfied we hit the road again. Destination: Roma. It was a late evening arrival to Liza's apartment, which she shares with her Italian rock star. On the way she described it in depth to me, and by the end I was imagining a Fascist's apartment filled with cat knick-knacks. As we pulled into her garage she said, "oh did I tell you there's a castle on the other side of our terrace? And sure as shit there's a castle on the other side of the wall from her terrace. The cat bank gets A billing, but the castle is below the fold. Typical. We cooked up some of the leftover tortelli from our cooking class, and put another day in the books (or in the blog...two days later).
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