Italy Day 5: Cinque Terre/Pisa/Florence

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Our train to Pisa didn't leave until late morning, so Mark and I took a walk through the town of Riomaggiore first thing in the morning. The weather was much better - just a few occasional drops of rain. There were a bunch of tweens gathered in a courtyard near our hotel, and we learned that Riomaggiore prides itself as the only town in the Cinque Terre that has a middle school for its population. It looked like the school only had two classrooms, but I'm sure that's better than shipping your young kids off to another city for school. We hiked to the top of town and found staggering views of the town and sea. Then on our way back down to the bottom of town, we stopped at a bakery and ate a lemon-themed breakfast: lemon focaccia, a crunchy croissant with what tasted like a lemon buttercream inside, and a pie wedge of pastry filled with lemon custard (my favorite of the three). The lemon focaccia was very sharp and interesting; the taste was okay but I don't think we'd choose it again.

A fond farewell to Cinque Terre

Riomaggiore

Silenzio, Bruno!

Our next overnight destination was Florence, but we decided to make an afternoon stop in Pisa on the way there. The main train station in Pisa offered luggage storage, so we took advantage of that and then hopped on a bus over to the Field of Miracles, home to Pisa's most famous sites. I don't especially enjoy watching travel shows (Mark does enjoy them); I feel they create too many expectations for what you will experience when you travel and I'd rather have more of a surprise with only enough foreknowledge to plan adequately. So when we walked through the walls surrounding the square I was so amazed and awestruck. In all honesty I didn't know what existed on the complex other than the Leaning Tower. The cathedral and baptistery were towering and impressive. We entered both.

We got this photo of Liz, much to Mark's chagrin

And we weren't the only ones taking photos like this.

The baptistery in Pisa is the largest in Italy and inside contains a pulpit carved by Nicola Pisano considered by some to be the first Renaissance sculpture. We were hoping for an acoustics demonstration by a singing security guard, but I think the combination of Covid and some construction inside prevented that from happening. On the outside, the dome is constructed of two different materials, traditional red clay tiles on the seaward side and lead tiles (fancier but more fragile) in the shade. If we hadn't read about it, we wouldn't have noticed that the baptistery actually has a tilt on it as well, though not nearly as much of a tilt as the tower and the tilt is in the opposite direction.

Baptistry and cathedral

Next we visited the cathedral. I was most impressed by the carvings on the outer door. There are scenes in panels on the front doors and they have been carved three dimensionally. Inside the cathedral, I was surprised by just how many Renaissance-esque paintings covered the walls. I think this is the first cathedral I've been to that screams "Renaissance" on the inside. Some interesting interior features include striped arches (which reminded me of the cathedral in Cordoba, Spain), the lamp that is said to have inspired Galileo when he observed it swinging, and the final (and most exquisite) pulpit carved by the Pisanos. The pulpit includes four hundred sculpted figures and shows chronological scenes from the life of Jesus along the top as you walk around it.

Cathedral exterior

and interior

We also went inside the Camposanto Cemetery. The cemetery contains many sarcophagi; Mark and I went shopping for our favorites. There are also giant frescoes on the walls; one is over 1,000 square feet in area. The frescoes were badly damaged during WWII and some are still being restored. The most attention-grabbing fresco was definitely Inferno, depicting Satan eating the hedonists, then pooping them out in hell to be tortured by demons.😈 I don't get many opportunities to use that emoji. 

What on earth did he eat?

For lunch we headed away from the tourist trap spots and found a doner restaurant out on one of the nearby streets. Our doners were spicier than a German doner, and they also contained fresh parsley for an Italian flair. Sad news is my main credit card fell out of my pouch at some point in Pisa and had not been found when we retraced our steps. On the bright side, we were near a McDonalds so I was able to take advantage of the Wifi and immediately freeze the card. I also downloaded the app for the credit card so we can immediately unfreeze it when we need to make a purchase using Mark's card. This is a good time to add in a note that while the U.S. has finally caught on to the chip idea in credit cards that Europe was using years before, Europe has moved beyond that to the tap and go system which is still trying to catch on in the U.S. Fortunately we just received a new card that has the tap technology and saves us a lot of hassle.

After finishing in Pisa we boarded the train to our final destination for the day, Florence. We will have three nights and two full days in Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance. Our hotel is close to the main train station and not far from most of the main sites and museums. That evening we followed Rick Steve's Renaissance walk and took in the main sites. The duomo was yet again, impressive. I think I was most impressed by how colorful it is on the outside. Apparently it's pretty blah on the inside so entering will not be one of our priorities in the next couple of days. Perhaps we'll just call it the inside-out cathedral. And the dome is also massively impressive - the technology to create such a dome did not exist at the time. Brunelleschi himself created the design and built it in only 14 years. Other sites we saw include Ghiberti's doors, several piazzas, lots of statues, and the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno river, home to fancy shops (and shops in older times as well) and the Medici's special walkway. We saw an overwhelming amount of famous stuff and some of it is blurring together.

Duomo exterior

Palazzo Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio, by night

Closed jewelry shops on the Ponte Vecchio

During our Renaissance walking tour we stopped at a unique dining spot recommended in our guidebook, Self-Service Ristorante Leonardo. It's a super-cheap (and good enough) cafeteria-style restaurant. I had some lasagna and a big salad with a mozzarella ball; Mark had cotoletta again (Milanesa) with fries and green beans. Our final cost was right around 20 Euros. The best part? No charge for water! You get a nice pitcher of water and it even has ice in it! We will probably be back for another cheap dinner before leaving Florence. We finished our evening with gelato - Mark chose coconut and stracciatella flavors; I chose grapefruit (not as good as I had hoped) and "English cake" which was quite delicious.

Italy Day 4: Cinque Terre

We woke up early to see what the status was of the weather alert. We were worried that the weather alert was going to shut down most of our planned activities, but the morning status was improved from the previous day. We decided to go ahead with our plans, and bought our Cinque Terre train pass.

Our first task was to head to Monterosso, where we enjoyed a light breakfast. Liz got a slice of breakfast tart with artichoke and ricotta filling, I got a slice of focaccia with tomato and olives. We started on the trail to Vernazza. While the weather wasn't perfect - we got periodic showers - it was good enough for us to proceed. At least our shoes stayed drier than the previous day in Milan. In spite of the weather, we managed to complete this leg of the trail while making pretty good time, and enjoyed some pretty views along the way. We arrived in Vernazza in less than ninety minutes.

Pre-hike photo

Monterosso al Mare

Vineyards

Strange contraption used to ride up the rails for grape harvesting

Vernazza

Since we had been in Vernazza the day before, we were at least somewhat familiar with it. We saw a few people eating fried fruti di mare in paper cones with a piece of lemon skewered into it and decided, we needed to try that. So we got a large cone of our own. It contained fried calimari, shrimp, anchovies, and some fritters. It was very tasty, and the anchovies tasted just fine (I'd never actually eaten a whole anchovy before). While there, we also availed ourselves of gelato at the same place we had gotten it from the night before. Liz got pistachio and the peach passionfruit again, and I got fig and lemon. Liz said the pistachio was the best pistachio gelato she's ever had.

Fish cone!

This fish is delish!

Obligatory gelato photo

We attempted the next leg of the trail to Corniglia, but discovered that it was closed (in spite of what was written on the website). So we took the train instead. Corniglia's train station is not inside the city, and you have to take a quick shuttle bus ride to get there. The driver seemed like he doesn't have much patience with clueless tourists. We looked around the town when we got there and ate some more gelato. We weren't planning on this originally, but the gelateria had a basil flavor which we just had to try. It tasted like pesto, and was surprisingly good.

Basil gelato

Mark likes trains

We took the train to Manarola next, and followed a walking tour from the guidebook. Manarola gave us our best photo opportunities thus far, as the weather was getting a bit better and the walking tour brought us to some good viewpoints. We encountered the most scenic playground we've ever seen, on the bluff outside of town with a beautiful view of Manarola, the Italian riviera, and a distant view of Corniglia and Monterosso.

Manarola - one of the most Instagrammed spots in the world

Candidate for world's most scenic playground

Cinque Terre panorama

We went back to Riomaggiore for a break, and decided to head to Monterosso for dinner since we hadn't explored that town as much. Our first efforts to find a restaurant failed: One of them didn't exist at the address as described, and the other was closed. We settled on a restaurant called L'Osteria and dined al fresco. We decided to go for seafood. We got a salad with tuna in it, and then got a plate of mussels and a seafood ravioli with sea bass and shrimp. It was delicious. We just missed our train and tried to explore the western part of town, but didn't see much. We returned to the station and caught a train that was bound for Parma - it skipped Vernazza, Corniglia and Manarola but thankfully stopped at Riomaggiore for a quick ride back to our hotel. At this point, it was a struggle for me to stay awake, so I surrendered to the bed before 10:00.

How you know fish is on the menu

The seafood ravioli was amazing

Italy Day 3: Milan/Cinque Terre

Monday, October 4, 2021

Good news - we slept through the night and woke up at a normal time to Mark's standard alarm that he forgot to turn off. Easiest jet lag recovery I've ever had. 

The story of today was RAIN! We started the day with breakfast in the Centrale station in Milan - I had a vegan whole wheat croissant with veggies inside and crunchy quinoa on top. The crunchy quinoa made for a great and delicious texture changeup! We took a train over to Parco Sempione, Milan's equivalent of Central Park which also contains the Sforza castle, originally a military fortress built in the late 1300s. We had planned to take a nice leisurely stroll through the park, but it was raining the entire time we were there. So we still walked through the park, but it was much less leisurely than anticipated. We didn't go inside the castle but it did look very impressive.

Ridiculously rainy day

Sforza castle, from a distance

And close-up

After our Parco excursion, we headed back to our hotel to pack our bags, blow dry our soaked shoes and socks from the rain, and check out. The rain had mostly let up and we still had a few hours before our train so we followed Rick Steve's walking tour through Porta Nuova, Milan's shiny and newish urban renewal district. We saw lots of shiny buildings including the tallest structure in Italy, the UniCredit Building. My favorite site was a couple of condo towers with a surprising amount of greenery hanging off all of the balconies, called The Vertical Forest. The purpose of these condos is to absorb all of the CO2 that is created in the area. We also took a stroll through a fancy grocery/megastore called Eataly. It was like the Nordstrom of grocery stores, with 3 levels of food and eateries with very expensive prices. We enjoyed window shopping but decided to take our business elsewhere. (The fresh bread loaves were priced around 14 Euros and above!)

Vertical Forest

We got our lunch from a much more standard grocery store for a much better price- focaccia, fruit and chocolate croissants. We were impressed that the equivalent price of the grapes was less than 50 cents/lb and our chocolate croissants we 50 euro cents each. It started to pour again so we headed quickly back to the Centrale station to await our train to the Cinque Terre region.

Our train ride was uneventful, with beautiful views of the rainy Italian countryside. It was about 3 hours to get to Levanto, then we had a short transfer to get to the town of Riomaggiore on the Mediterranean coast where we are staying. Our hotel host met us at the train station and informed us that it was a really bizarre time in the Cinque Terre. A storm was a brewin', and as a result almost everything in Riomaggiore was closed, aside from a couple bars that happen to have both a front and rear door. They were allowed to stay open because they have two potential emergency exits instead of just one. This weather alert is in effect until 1 pm tomorrow afternoon, which means all of the Cinque Terre hiking trails are closed until then as well. On the bright side, two of the towns in the Cinque Terre, still have open stores and restaurants because their town leaders have different regulations. So after settling into our room, we took the train a few towns over to Vernazza to explore and have dinner. The sea views from Vernazza are stunning, with giant waves from the storm coming in and occasional lightning. We chose a simple spot for dinner but it was good enough - some bruschetta, pasta with pesto (this region is the birthplace of pesto), and a salad. Only one gelato place was open but they had the most amazing gelato flavor ever - PEACH PASSIONFRUIT. If you don't know this, I am very passionate about passionfruit so of course we tried this flavor mixed with some vanilla and it did not disappoint. I think we will need to come back here for seconds before leaving Cinque Terre!

The weather for tomorrow is questionable but we are hoping for the best and will be frequently refreshing the weather alert pages for the area. 🤞

Welcome to Riomaggiore

Bruschetta and Pesto

Peach passionfruit gelato!

Italy Days 1 & 2: Arrival in Milan

We had two flights to get to Italy. The first was from Seattle to Newark. We woke up bright and early and went to the airport with dad, who volunteered (or was voluntold) to help us with transportation. After an uneventful flight, we wandered around the Newark airport, which was somewhat confusing and didn’t have very good way finding for restaurants. Our second flight, from Newark to Milan, was delayed by over an hour on the tarmac due to some customer service issue. We don’t know exactly what it was, but they had to fetch something out of the luggage compartment. We finally took off, and got only a fitful sleep before landing in Milan.

Milano cookies on the way to Milan! (We supplied these ourselves)

The best gelato we had on the trip so far! To be surpassed by all the other gelato we would later have.

The immigration and customs process was some of the quickest I’ve ever done. We were only in line for a few minutes, and we were quickly checked and allowed in. I was amazed at how fast it was. We bought our tickets for the Malpensa Express, and before long we were on our way.

After an hour or so, we arrived at Milan’s Centrale station. It’s an impressive building, designed by the fascists to make you feel small. Outside, we left our baggage in the hotel and were on our way to see the duomo.

The view of Milano Centrale station from our hotel window

The duomo, Milan’s cathedral, is a spectacular building with hundreds of spires. We decided to get the ticket that let us see the cathedral, rooftop, archeological site, and the museum. We started with the rooftop (we took the stairs). The level of detail is exquisite, and I loved seeing all the gargoyles and the various statues on top of and inside the spires. We also got a nice view of the city, although it’s not as tall as the other cathedral we’ve climbed (Strasbourg, France).

View from the front

Climbing to the roof

Pointy!

There are hundreds of spires

Liz's mom served her mission here, it was appropriate to send her a greeting

The inside of the cathedral is impressively large, with a very long nave and lots of beautiful artwork. It includes a grotesque statue of St. Bartholomew, who was flayed alive. They claim to have one of the nails from Christ’s cross, which I’m skeptical of. The archeological site, underneath the cathedral, includes an ancient baptistry and other ruins.

St. Bartholomew the Flayed holding his skin

We decided to head back to the hotel at this point, although we also enjoyed a light lunch of pizza (basically prosciutto on focaccia) and a stroll through the Galleria, a covered shopping center. We also saw the outside of the famous Scala theater, one of the world’s premier opera houses. While the interior is probably dazzling, the outside is nondescript.

First pizza in Italy!

Galleria

We took a power nap of about an hour, and it was awfully hard for me to get back up. We went back to the Duomo and saw the museum, which has lots of preserved things such as old spires that broke, and old statues and relics that for whatever reason they do not store in the cathedral anymore.

Gargoyles! Scary!

Scale model of the Duomo used for its construction

After this, we made it over to the canal district, where we had dinner. This is a happening place, with lots of people gathering to enjoy the evening. We decided to get dinner at a restaurant recommended by our guide book, and got a few Milanese specialties: Cotoletta alla Milanesa (a common meal from my mission, similar to the Austrian Wienerschnitzel), and ossobuco served over Milanese risotto. They were delicious and very filling. So filling, in fact, that Liz had an interesting bathroom encounter (more on that later). Aside from some extremely bright screens used for advertising, the district is very lovely and a good place to spend the evening. We dined al fresco, and thankfully it only sprinkled rain a few times but otherwise stayed dry. We were accosted by several people trying to sell us roses, and they all reacted differently when we said no. The first guy tried to shame us into buying from him, saying he was poor. The second guy just left without a word. The third guy tried to turn on the charm. None of them worked, of course.

Canal district

Ossobuco over risotto

Cotoletta

Guest paragraph by Liz: Towards the end of our dinner, I really needed to poop and couldn't wait until we got back to our hotel. So I used the restroom inside of the restaurant, but then I couldn't figure out how to flush it. There was no handle on the tank (which had a different positioning anyway from a standard U.S. toilet), and there was a giant switch on the wall which did nothing when I pushed on it. I panicked, thinking I was going to have to leave the restroom with the toilet unflushed, but then I tried a last-ditch effort of yanking on a suspicious-looking pull cord attached to the wall. Well, that was a bad idea. That set off a loud ringing alarm heard throughout the entire restaurant and I still didn't get the toilet flushed and had to leave the restroom in shame looking like an idiot. Come to find out, public restrooms in Italy are required to have an alarm pull cord in case there is an "I'm falling and I can't get up!" moment. I was so embarrassed for my acts as an ignorant American tourist and we finished up at the restaurant as quickly as possible. In retrospect, I think if I had held down the giant switch on the wall instead of just pushing it, the toilet would have flushed. Hindsight is 20/20.

Observations:

• Milan has lots of public art on display

• The pigeons at the duomo are braver than most and people were getting pictures of themselves with pigeons landing on them to eat food from their hands. Why would you want pictures of yourself covered with flying rats?

• The Milanese don’t like using the stairs much when escalators are available.

Falling asleep on the metro

Duomo pigeons