Walk till you can walk no more

and finally the steepest and last set (the sixth) to the road
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We are in Italy!!!!! And we love it. Only if we had known it would be so good, we might have got here a lot sooner.

Considering my sleepless night in Nice, Robin took over driving duties for the day. We headed out of Nice on Autoroute 8. Only a little blue sign on the highway told us we were entering Italy. No passport checks, no customs, no line. You didn’t even have to slow down if it were not for the toll booth. As it seems to happen all the time, Robin ends up driving the exciting parts of the trip. This part of France and Italy is incredibly hilly but the highway is very impressive. It is an endless series of tunnels through the mountains and viaducts (bridges) connecting the tunnels over the valleys in between the mountains. We lost count of the number of tunnels (easily over fifty) long before we reached our destination. It is as if someone put two points on the map and decided to build a road in between them regardless of the terrain. The Italians have a name for each and every tunnel and bridge, clearly posted. Imagine the traffic report on the radio… “Severe congestion from tunnel Lucia to bridge Olivietto”. Robin did a wonderful job driving us through all of it, braving the cross winds, trucks and crazy Italians racing each other in their fancy sports cars. The nail marks on the steering wheel are proof.

Oh Wait! just another quarter mile up the steep main stree to the garage on top of the village to get to the car
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Jill got a little confused and tried to direct us onto this goat path. Now that we were smarter, we decided to stop and ask for directions instead. That is when we realized we were in Italy, not France. The contractor type of guy on the side of the windy road stopped his machine and though he could not speak a word of English, tried valiantly to give us directions in sign language. In France we would have got the frosty “This is France, we speak French” propaganda line. Thanks to him and another garage mechanic, we made it to our first stop in Italy, a tiny little village called Riomaggiore in the Northwest coast of Italy called Cinque terre. It is one of five coastal villages on a very rocky and hilly coastline. Ancient, jaw droppingly pretty and getting popular with tourists every day.

Packing the essentials on the side of the road was way better than lugging rob's green suitcase(aka. the green monster) up to the room
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As there is no traffic allowed into town, we parked our car and for the first time ever on this trip payed for parking. It is as expensive as parking in NYC. Thank god for the driving lessons I took to pass my driving test in England. I would not have been able to parallel park our manual Fiat punto into that tiny space on the steepest of inclines otherwise. Having found a precious parking spot we took our bags and began walking down the even more steep main road of the village towards our bed and breakfast for the next two days. We were happy that the road was all downhill, counting down the street numbers to the one we wanted. With a little bit of difficulty and more help from friendly Italians we located our landlady. That is when our adventure really began. All the stairs we have climbed on our trip so far did not prepare us for this. The photos explain it better than a thousand words.

The site we saw when our landlady cheerily announced we had arrived at the apartment (very demoralising)
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Early this morning we decided to walk the trail that runs through all five villages. Now, both of us are certainly not the athletic type and this is summer in Italy. Keeping this in mind, I tried valiantly to convince Robin that perhaps it might be a better idea to take the very cheap and much quicker train for part of the way instead. Well, I failed. We climbed a lot more steps and walked a lot longer (six hours to be precise) than we have done altogether so far on this trip. There were olive groves, vineyards, spectacular views of the coastline, interesting cemeteries, Via del’ amore (path of love) and steep drops from the side of the unbelievably narrow trail. At the end of the day it was well worth it. We rewarded ourselves with yummy popsicles and a really good pizza along the way. We also took a boat ride to get more of the scenery and the best part of it all, jumped in the sea. It is the clearest, bluest water I have ever seen. The water was so good that the incredibly rocky beach could not spoil it.

Sunset from the beach
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Today has been one of the best, if not the best day of our trip so far. I can’t put a finger on it, the people, the scenery, the food, the laid back attitude, blue skies, bluer water, views from our apartment… it all adds up.

Italy has been a revelation. Both of us love it. We have only been here two days but we cant say enough about this place. Full of Buenoseras and chiaos. Neighbors gossiping, old men and women sat on benches talking, kids playing soccer, smell of fresh bread and garlic wafting out of windows, the Italian studs strutting around in their way too tight jeans and way too small wifebeaters, speedos to make you cringe……. Oh, nothing compares. The shopkeeper at the souvenir shop summed it up best without a hint of hesitation “Of course, we are the best”. The French just feel like they are trying too hard to be the best.