Torino & Cinque Terre

Ciao Bellos e Bellas (15th Sept)

Greetings from Italy. Ahhhhh Italy! Well it's beauty, splendour and style has made me fall in love with it all over again! What more can I say..... the Carabinieri are still an eyeful and worth the wait in those Armani uniforms that they wear so well.

After a few attempts to post, we have decided to now put things onto Notepad and paste it to the site when we have a reliable internet service!

Our journey begins with the flight from Luton to Torino. Good old EasyJet ... for those who have watched the series on TV, we tried our best but couldn't find the little guy that they keep having on to ask for an autograph. Seriously though, there we were sitting on board watching the baggage handlers sit there doing nothing with still a cart of luggage to be loaded when the captain announces that they are looking for a bag to take off as someone has decided "not to fly with them today". Surely they could not have given up being stuffed in with not the cheeriest cabin staff to fly full price with BA? After spending 10 minutes digging around in the hold they found the bag - still sitting on the cart they had not yet loaded. Fortunately the rest of the flight was uneventful other than the cabin staff "forgetting" to bring Marty's 2 euro change until he buzzed and asked them for it. Now we know how they keep the flights so cheap!

We arrived in Torino late-ish afternoon 5pm, and it was 26*C, sticky and hot, and made our way to our hotel near to the Porta Nuova train station. It was a nice enough hotel for the price - clean and tidy and a cheery receptionist. After a quick drop off we rushed off for the bus to the famed Al Bicerin - a cafe that has been making chocolate since the 1700's. Their eponomous signature drink is a shot of strong espresso coffee, a layer of hot chocolate and a layer of creamy milk on top. Its delicious to say the least. Alas, they were closing up for the day so we charaded opening times for tomorrow with a lovely lady who could speak 'poco' english and then decided to go find an Aperativo instead.

If you're ever in Turin, we recommend these places:

Lobelix
via Corte d'Appello 15f

A funky bar with dim lights, polished concrete floor, sort-of Spanish influence, tables and chairs spilling out onto the piazza, and the obligatory gorgeous barmen - Marty didn't know where to look either - the women all know how to dress so well and walk the cobbled streets in sky-high heels. For 8 euros you get any drink (including cocktails, wines or 500ml beer) and can fill up on as much food as you want. They have big dishes of beautifully prepared pickled salads, cold meats, fruit, warm caseroles, pizza slices, you name it, they've got it. It is the most fantastic place to start an evening out but not to make a night of as the problem is - if you want another drink it'll cost you another 8 euros and then you'll have to eat more! It's all age groups too, lots of people stopping in to grab a bite on their way to somewhere else.

Piazza Vitorrio Veneto

The Piazza where everyone in Turin was out to see or be seen! It was a busy melting pot with people everywhere, dining, drinking enjoying the balmy evening. The sides are lined with the large grand old buildings with cafes, restaurants and bars almost constantly. It overlooks the River Po with the beautiful building of the Chiesa de Gran Madre di Dio on the other side. The church was strikingly lit up and the traffic seemed to flow from all around to the bridge from the paizza to the church. Surprisingly with all that traffic, there wasn't a lot of horn-blowing - I reckon the Unley Metro Centre has way more attitude and that is only in the afternoons! This seemed to be the Torino equivalent of the Hindley/Rundle Street cruise but instead of old Commodore's, Gemini's, Kingswood's and Falcon's there was hoardes of tiny little Fiat's, Lancia's and Alfa Romeo's! We saw fireworks and an RBT! Not sure how seriously the Italians take the RBTs. We took in the sights and people watched while sitting in the piazza and sipping a Piedmont glass of red wine. Very civilized!

Via Po

This is a beautiful galleried street running from the Piazza Vittorio Veneto back towards the city centre. Many more cafes and some jammed with more people including dozens of prams. It seems as though the Torinese have no issues about taking the bambinos out to the strip with them on a Saturday night. The kids seemed fine - most were sleeping away in the prams and buggys oblivious to what was going on around them. We had to stop here and sample real Italian coffees and cakes (Dario - imagine Al Fresco but with twice the selection of cakes). Mind you, the waiting staff had a bit of attitude - in fact they reminded me of the male waiters at the Playford Hotel as they had the same walk and sneery look.
Torino still looks as though it could be a 16th century city as it seems like most of the original buildings are still standing and those that are new have been built to fit in with the rest. They didn't really start to modernise until the 20th century when they added som new through roads and they are only now constructing a metro system.

Torino - continued (16th Sept)

Sunday morning we finally made it to Al Bicerin and it was well worth the trip just for the taste. The cafe is situated in a piazza with a 14th century bell tower across from it which is still in full working order. We heard "the bells of the angelus" ringing out from the tower. As we walked back to the hotel from there we also passed 3 other old churches in the space of 10 minutes. Plenty of choice for which sermon you want to hear that day!
We picked up our bags and headed for the Porta Nuova station for the train to Riomaggiore via Genova. The trains were the regional trains rather than any sort of Inter-City fast train so there wasn't much in the way of facilities - no chance of a buffet car or trolley service here, or air-conditioning for that matter! They also seemed to stop at all the little towns in between Torino and Genova. The great thing however was that the fare was only 23 euros. The land was very flat until the outskirts of Genova when we started going through a constant series of tunnels. Genova seems to be a bit like Adelaide in that sense that it is hemmed in between the sea and the hills ... only the hills are about twice the height. We then got our first glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea. It continued like this all the way down the coast to the Cinque Terre, with hills, tunnels and the sea. The views (when we were outside the tunnels) were amazing with vinyards, olive groves and apartments all perched on the slopes at various points.

We arrived in Riomaggiore about 8pm and asked at the Information Booth at the station for directions to our apartment. A jumpled reply in English directed us across the square, then something intelligible, then 10 mteres on the left. We walked out and of course went straight across and up the steep hill ahead of us. After climbing up the hill and round the side - asking everyone on the way with varying levels of success in communicating (mostly old Italians with poco or no English at all) - we spoke to another old Italian man with no Engish but who managed to charade us in the right direction down a labyrinth of steep, narrow, winding stone steps (non-standard drop according to Karyn) which brought us out onto the main street that Karyn recognised as being 2 minutes walk through the tunnel from the station. If only we had heard that part of the directions clearly from the lady at the station!

After carrying our rucksacks up, down and round about the hilly town we were both ready to drop by the time we got to the room. A shower soon perked us up a bit and we went out to a local restaurant to be served a delicious meal of local delicacies - stuffed anchovies, mussels and pasta in pesto sauce with potato slices in it. Stuffed anchovies - now you may squish your nose at the idea but, we thought we'd try something from the region that is a little unusual and we were not disappointed. The region is known for its jars of salted anchovies but these were far from that icky saltyness that you may be so familiar with from a pizza topping! It rocked. Karyn was also curious of how they would stuff an anchovy - her recollection was that they aren't exactly a big fish. No bigger than a prawn morsel with the tail still attached, Karyn had 6 little anchovies on a bed of little lettuce leaves. The anchovies looked like they had pregnant bellies - it was a mixture of bread, herbs, & cheese. We also polished off a brilliant bottle of white wine from South Tirol - Austria. The pasta with pesto was sooooooooo good Karyn inhaled it like she hadn't seen food in months, and the mussels that Marty had were such a huge serve that it seemed to take him hours just to get them all out of their shells - also, every shell had opened and some mussels were as large as a wine cork!

Riomaggiore - Day 2 (17th Sept) HAPPY BIRTHDAY KARYN !!!!!!

Another spectacular day although the sun took a good part of the morning to burn off the cloud. We had breakfast in the room and then headed off to properly explore the town. Once again we seemed to end up up and down many little stairways and alleyways, but without the burden of rucksacks it was so much easier. The town has a little old castle overlooking the harbour (well what they call a harbour) and the views are amazing from there ... along the whole Cinque Terre coastline. We spent the whole morning wandering round with a stop at a harbourside cafe where we wfinaly worked out that a Latte Machiatto is the equivalent of an Australian Latte, although served more tepido than the hot ones you get at Hudsons. On the way back we collected some supplies at the supermarket and prepared a packed lunch to eat along the Via Del'Amore (Lover's Lane) which links Riomaggiore with Manarola, which is the next village along the coast. It was a beautiful walk in the sunshine with lots of little "shrines" along the way and what seemed like an infinite number of "x loves y" messages written or carved into walls, cactus, trees, benches ... in fact anything and everything.

We ate lunch nestled in the rocks at Manarola harbour watching fish swim by and the water looked so good that we had to go back to the rooms and change so we could go for a dip.
When we got back from Manarola, there was a note on our door from Sarah, Joel and Sam wishing Karyn Happy Birthday. We will have a toast with you in spirit tonight when we eat dinner.