Florence, Cinque Terre

Travel journal, continued...

April 18, 2006

My mother, you will all be pleased to know, does not actually have a fisherman cap.

She has a little tennis sun-visor instead. It is very styling. She looks adorable. There are a lot of Japanese tourists in Manarola, and all of them were wearing the fisherman cap. I pointed out this strange racial relationship between our peeps and those damn hats to my mother, and she laughed. Then she looked thoughtful. It worried me.

Mom's hat. I'm not leaving her face out on purpose. The Guy takes odd photos.

We crashed last night, after the long car drive, and this morning we were still sore when we set out. Way too much inactivity followed by way too much activity. The nice pensionne people let us park our luggage in their closet for a few hours, so we wandered around in Florence for a little while longer, discovering St. Mark(dammit. Lost the apostrophe again)s church, which was rather cute. Then we sat very quietly for a long time in a beautiful piazza, just watching people wander by.

The United States needs plazas. They need open areas where you can just sit and hang out. Europeans have a mastery for leisure that Americans just don't. I posit that it has something to do with a real interest in people. Europeans, by and large, seem to be more interested in people, and are willing to take the time to watch them and talk to them. I don't know. Maybe that's just my imagination.

Given the Catholic holiday, there were a lot of nuns wandering around. They were fascinating. We commented to ourselves on them, were childishly and very youthfully merciless about their age, then proceeded to get our asses kicked by a couple of tiny little old ones who were pushing 90, easy. They passed us while we walked down the street. We put out a burst of effort and overtook them. Two minutes later, we were eating their dust, and were never able to catch up again. Sad.

Caught the train to Manarola, which put us at Cinque Terre, a lovely stretch of five villages on the Italian coast. Our train from Pisa was half an hour late, which made us miss our connection. No worries. The train to Cinque Terre runs once every hour.

Cinque Terre is a series of five villages set on the coast of the Italian Riviera. We were staying in the second of the five villages, Manarola.

The village is gorgeous, built like colorful crayon boxes off the side of a ridiculous cliff. It looks like it might slide into the sea at any moment, and yet somehow, it doesn't. We met up with mom quite by accident at the train station, and hiked up a 60 degree cliff to get to our hostel. Which was closed. Come back at 5 pm. We left our luggage on the terrace -- the Guy fretted about it, convinced it would all be stolen. My personal opinion was that any idiot who really wanted to carry that shit up and down these cliffs was more than welcome to it -- and then hiked down so we could hike back up so we could hike across a long cliff path to the next village, Riomaggiore. The view was gorgeous.

On the way, Mom told us about her adventures in Turin. Funny story. Apparently, she and a fellow violin teacher went to some place or another and asked if they could get the senior rate to get in. Sure, said the attendant. What country are you from? Mom's friend said Canada. No problem. She got the senior rate. Mom said USA.

Sorry, said the attendant. You don't qualify. Mom was disappointed. She could have used her Japanese passport, of course, but she would have looked bad. Must not look bad. She paid full rate.

"I think they do not like Bush," she told me sadly, and shook her head.

I dunno. I thought it was funny.

The youth hostel that we're staying at is the only one in Cinque Terre. I admit I had qualms when Mom said she wanted to stay there, but we booked it regardless -- and holy cow, what a deal. As a family of three, we decided to go ahead and book an entire room. Four bunk beds, an organic restaurant downstairs, and a private bathroom. If you ever decide to visit Cinque Terre, stay there. Ostello "5 Terre" Via Riccobaldi, 21. They have a web site. The food along makes it well worth it.

More hiking and beautiful views tomorrow. Tonight, fantastic food and sleep. Ciao!