From Sloping Hills to Sloping Building

Monday 17th August

Buonasera

It seems quite some time ago that we wrote the last blog – this won’t be a long one as we have had a reasonably quiet first part of the week staying in Torre Daniele until Wednesday morning.
We headed south on Wednesday travelling on some lovely country roads, lovely but narrow and windy with oncoming buses etc testing our nerves. We stopped in Trino at a market where we purchased our fruit, veges, pasta and meat for a couple of days. The food in Italy is exceptional – not sure how good for the waistline it is! We carried on down to the coast and spent the night in the seaside town of Albissola Marina, then the following day we drove through some very narrow steep roads into the coastal town of Delva Marina. The roads were so narrow and windy that it took us 4 hours to do 130kms. Delva Marina was definitely a favorite place for us so far and we enjoyed it for three nights. The town itself is quite small with only restaurants, cafes, bars, apartments and camping grounds. The camping ground we stayed in ran a bus down to the beach and the railway station. The beach whilst very full of people was a great place to loose a few hours just swimming in the warm water and reading our books. At one stage the girl beside us asked us the time – we knew we arrived at the beach just before midday – so Brent said to her he thought it was about 3.00pm – turned out to be 5.00pm. Delva Marina was also a great place to explore the Cinque Terre (Italian Riveria). The Cinque Terre is made up of 5 tiny villages on Italy’s most picturesque coastline – the easiest way to visit these villages is by either walking the 12km or by train. As the temperature was a good 36 degrees and the walking up some steep coastline we opted for the train! We had a great day hopping on and off the train visiting Riomaggiore – where they sold great gelato and provided some wonderful scenery over the marina for us to enjoy. Manorola – which was great watching the people jumping off some huge rocks into the very clear waters below. Cornigila – which was the only village that didn’t have direct beach access but had a great old narrow village to wonder around. Vernazza – a picture card perfect village, with the old very colourful houses along with a beautiful beach (our favourite). Monterosso – which had a parking area for campervans, so we decided to head there Sunday morning to have a day on the beach – however this wasn’t to be as by 9.45am the town was full and we were turned away at the top of the hill by the local lady cop.
We then decided to continue driving the beautiful busy coastline into Pisa. At one stage of the drive we encountered a stretch of coastline which was about 30km long and the whole place was just bursting, boiling, seething with people – the only comparison we can think of to describe it is – New Brighton beach on guy fawkes night only on a much bigger scale. A zebra crossing every 100 metres ensured very slow progress. This drive really did highlight the Italian road habits, the drivers are reasonable, the pedestrians frustrating and the cyclists arrogant. Not uncommon for a pedestrian to just stand in the middle of the road and ignore you, how with a 3.5 tonne camper bearing down on them we don’t know, brave or stupid?? The cyclists own the road, god help you if you think otherwise. They ride 2 or 3 abreast on narrow roads, the middle of the road when they feel like it, they own the road and all the drivers know they do and drive accordingly. All in all Italian drivers have a lot of patience.
The camp ground we stayed in Pisa was only 800 metres away from The Leaning Tower. Sunday night that we arrived we did a Pisa by night tour on a small motorized train – this gave us a great insight into the city which is really there for the tower and the university. We then headed back into the town in the morning on our bikes for another look around before we had another swim and then onto Florence. Rae has a good souvenir of Pisa – a bathing cap which was compulsory for all people with hair to wear in the swimming pool!! Brent didn’t require one!!!
We are now in Florence in a camping ground that has a wonderful view over the city – and we are looking forward to exploring the city tomorrow. Brent’s Mum’s name was Dorothy Florence so whilst exploring this city she won’t be far from our thoughts.

Ciao