Christie and Luke

The last stop in Italy was Livorno, Italy. What’s in Livorno you ask? I don’t know, we didn’t check it out. The nice thing about Livorno is that is is a port town that has access to some really cool places so it is pretty easy to skip over the city. The three places people usually go are Florence, Pisa, and Cinque Terre. Of course Pisa is the home of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (which incidentally they are able to straighten it out but decided not to for tourism) but besides that there isn’t a whole lot to see. Florence is one of Christie’s favorite cities in Italy but we didn’t want to deal with the 1.5 hour train ride into town in case there was another non-air conditioned train incident like in Rome. We opted to join our first “shore excursion” (i.e. pay out the wazoo to have the cruise take you on a tour) so we didn’t have to think about anything. This turned out to be a fantastic idea.

We boarded the air conditioned bus around 7:30 AM and started the hour ride up to Cinque Terre. Along the way our tour guide introduced herself as Fulvia and to say she could talk was an understatement. As we were leaving the port she said that she had never really had a chance to see Livorno so she got a copy of Lonely Planet and it said that the place was “a dump” so we weren’t going to see any sites there. Along the drive she told us very interesting stories about the surrounding areas and places we were driving through. We drove past Pisa and could see the top of the Leaning Tower, she spoke about the Tuscan region and some of the towns, and she also told us about how a large portion of the worlds marble comes from Carrara, Italy. Michaelangelo got the marble for his “David” sculpture there and the marble was also used in the Pantheon. Very cool. The way the sun was hitting the mountain of marble in the morning made it look grey and you couldn’t see much but on the drive home the entire mountain was white. It was all marble. Along the highway there were giant blocks of marble waiting to be processed. Coming soon to a counter near you….

As we are getting closer to our first stop in Cinque Terre, Manarola, Fulvia starts to tell us more about what were are about to walk into. As it turns out the charm of Cinque Terre is the fact that it has been more or less cut off from the rest of the world for the majority of it’s existence. The five fishing villages were accessible only by walking and water (when weather permitted) so they have not been heavily influences buy the hedonism of the rest of the world. With that charm comes a set of it’s own problems. They had to plan ahead for things such as medical and other supplies since the walk was so treacherous. The mountain side is very steep making travel very difficult. Another interesting side note is that since they are cut off from outsiders there is a lot of inbreeding. Pretty much all of the locals are related so they call each other cousin.

I’m falling behind on my history but a long time ago there was a path between Manarolo and Riomaggiore and there was a terrible landslide. The two towns spent 30 months building a path and reinforcing it with cement and cable nets to ensure that it would survive and be safe. In the middle of this path there was a lock placed there, supposedly by two lovers, and the story was that they were from the two different towns and that they had met there, locked the lock to the railing and threw the key away to symbolize that their love was forever. I think a girl locked her cheating boyfriend up, chopped him to pieces and threw him into the ocean because Italian women are crazy but I digress. Since then hundreds of locks have been added but apparently the times are catching up and people are using combination locks just in case.

Okay, just a little more on Cinque Terre. It consists of over 4,300 miles of terraces that are used to grow grapes for wines. That is longer than the Great Wall of China and is almost straight up. Since they didn’t have a lot of horizontal space they had to build up. Also, since this was a small town cutoff from civilization, they didn’t have machines to go up and down the hill sides so they walked. Apparently there are some women there that could kill an ox with their thighs. I didn’t see them but I was trying to avoid eye contact just in case.

After we walked to Riomaggiore and poked around the town a bit we hopped on a boat that took us up to Monterosso. On this boat we found a shaded seat outside and dried off on the boat ride. We had a couple hours to spend in this town so we got some lunch and wowee; it was good. The traditional dish in this region is Trofie al Pesto and I highly recommend it. If you like pesto then you will be happy with this. We also got a bottle of Begasti wine because it was local and it was white (I was sweating and wanted something cold) and it was delicious. It was so good in fact we found it at the liquor store and bought one to bring home. To top off the trip we got some Gelato to finish the meal then made our way back to our air conditioned bus for the ride home. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy the shore excursion but I have to say that it was very nice not having to worry about anything. They had all the transportation lined up and we had an awesome guide as well. Oh yeah, it was also the cheapest shore excursion they had!

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