May 23 2018

Florence or Firenze

When we left Cinque Terre, the weather had cool down a lot as it rained the night before. We made our way to the train station to catch the fast train to Pisa Central with 10-15 minutes to spare to get onto another platform to catch the commuter train to Florence. When we arrived in Florence it was pouring rain! We put on our rain jackets and made our way to the hotel which is right smack in the Grand Duomo area. Every place we stay at has provided directions but we struggle each and every time. The instructions are written poorly and street names are on the side of the buildings but sometimes it is no where to be found. The streets do not have a grid layout so it makes it even more challenging. (Did you know that if the streets in Italy have a grid layout, it is due to the Roman influence and when the streets go however which way it is from the medieval times.)

The Piazza del Duomo. We are staying just steps away from this major tourist landmark

Since the weather was cooler, we decided to change to our jeans and also hope to visit the cathedral. Shoulders and knees are not to be exposed if you want to visit these sacred places. We wanted to climb up to the dome, known as the cupola or Brunelleschi’s Dome, but there were no more tickets for the next few days so we were undecided on what to do next.. we walked around the Piazza del Duomo and saw someone who looked like a person who helps tourists with questions. Well, she turned out to be a tour operator with a deal for us – tickets to climb up the dome in 15mins! The tour usually costs €55 but we can have it for €45 as business has been slow because of the rain. Well, ok, we did it, when were we going to be in Florence again?

Narrow walkway inside the dome

Fresco in the dome

Brunelleschi’s Dome started in 1420 and took over 150 years to build but part of it was never quite completed because Michelangelo said it looks like a cricket’s cage when asked for his opinion. Since Michelangelo’s opinion was the cardinal law, the lead artist (Baccio d’Agnolo) after Brunelleschi’s death walked away from the project. Anyways, the climb up to the Duomo is 463 steps and is not for those who are afraid of heights, claustrophobic, suffer from vertigo or heart conditions. It is quite narrow going up and at a particular section there is not much headroom. We were on a walkway inside the dome, just below the frescos. The painting inside the dome was started in 1572 by Giorgio Vasari in 1572.After the death of Giorgio Vasari in 1574, Federico Zuccaro, an artist from Urbino, completed the frescoes around 1575-79. Being so close to the fresco gives you a deeper appreciation for the effort and skill that went into creating it. Once you are up top and outside the dome, you can see all of Florence and beyond.

View of Florence from the Dome

After this unplanned tour it was time for dinner. Florence is famous for their steak – Bistecca alla Fiorentina. The Florentine steak is cut from the veal loin of the Chianina breed. The Chianina is an Italian breed of cattle, formerly principally a draught breed, now raised mainly for beef. It is the largest and one of the oldest cattle breeds in the world. The beef is aged for 2-3 weeks and is at room temperature before it is cooked on a very hot grill. It is served on a wooden chopping board and sprinkled with coarse salt. There is only one way to have the steak and that is rare. All we can say is yummy! It’s very tender and flavourful.

Many of the steakhouses have the beef on display that you’ll see walking by….

Florentine Steak

The Florence Baptistery (Italian: Battistero di San Giovanni), also known as the Baptistery of Saint John, is a religious building in Florence, Italy, and has the status of a minor basilica.

Another one of Florence’s must see attraction is David, the famous David by Michelangelo. When we had walked by Galleria dell’Accademia, the line up was around the block. We were not able to get any skip the line tickets either.. Hmm, so our best bet is to go there before the gallery opens and stand in line and we did just that. So, after waiting in line for over an hour we finally got in. The one thing you notice about David is how disproportionately large his hands are. Well, there was a reason for that, when Michelangelo carved David, the statue was supposed to be placed high above and Michelangelo wanted to make sure people can see the details. Another explanation for the large hand is that David is commonly said to be “manu fortis” – “strong of hands”.

David by Michelangelo. Everybody wants to take a perfect picture of David without extra heads in the photo, I succeeded! Found that small window of opportunity and click! 🙂

After the gallery, we walked to another section of Florence to meet our tour guide – Ludivica. Ludivica took us on a walking tour of Florence and visited some of the interesting sites around. She also shared the history about Florence and her people. One of the funny fact she shared with the group is that she doesn’t own a clothes dryer, she has an expresso machine which is more important!

Hercules and Cacus outside the Palazzo Vecchio

Church of Orsanmichele. Apparently Steven Spielberg donated $1M towards the restoration of this church.

After our walking tour we went to the central market Mercato di Lorenzo for lunch.

Mercato Centrale Florence

We picked up some strawberries and cherries. Cherries were so so, strawberries were excellent

Santa Croce, rebuilt for the Franciscan order in 1294 by Arnolfo di Cambio, is the burial place for the great and good in Florence. Michelangelo is buried in Santa Croce, as are Rossini, Machiavelli, and the Pisan-born Galileo Galilei, who was tried by the Inquisition and was not allowed a Christian burial until 1737, 95 years after his death.

Since it was a late lunch, we were not hungry at dinner time and guess what… triple scoops of gelato for dinner! We wandered into a little gelateria just off the main street. The store was quite busy and who knew we showed up at one of the best gelateria in the Florence area! And yes, it was that good!

May 22 2018

Cinque Terra

We spent 3 days in Cinque Terra which translates to the five villages and is a UNESCO world heritage centre that dates back to the late Middle Ages. The five villages are Riomaggiore, Manorola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare. According to Wikipedia – Cinque Terre is a string of centuries-old seaside villages on the rugged Italian Riviera coastline. In each of the 5 towns, colorful houses and vineyards cling to steep terraces, harbors are filled with fishing boats and trattorias turn out seafood specialties along with the Liguria region’s famous sauce, pesto. The Sentiero Azzurro cliffside hiking trail links the villages and offers sweeping sea vistas.

Lemon festival

Lemon products

Cinque Terre is also known for the lemons and anchovies. There are so many stores selling lemon products like soap, candy and limoncello (liquer). On our first evening we went looking for a restaurant and lucked out at a fancy restaurant overlooking the water and town. Apparently this is the place to be if you intend to propose… And did you know that the Italians don’t usually have their dinner till 7:30? We usually get a table without a reservation when the restaurant opens for business around 6 to 6:30.

Dinner in Monterosso

Sunset at Monterosso

Vernazza

One of the most popular activity in Cinque Terre is to hike from one town to another. On our first full day we hike from Monterosso ( where we are staying ) to Manarola, 4 towns in total. The hike can be quite strenuous at times as there is quite a lot of elevation gain before heading downhill again to another small town. The trail is very enjoyable, sometimes you are walking right along the terraced vineyards. We also saw many olives trees and of course not to mention the different wild flowers. By the time we arrived at the first stop, my shirt was soaked with sweat and I had to buy a quick-drying t-shirt, yeah, I was expecting a stroll, not huff and puff my way up stone steps and sweat like a pig! It was between 24-27C but felt so much warmer as it was humid.

Vernazza

Vernazza

Corniglia in the distance

The trail connecting the last town is closed as it was damaged by landslide and is accessible by train or boat. Since it was towards the end of the day, we decided to call it a day and take the train back to Monterosso. We had hiked over 25km.

Grape vines

Corniglia

The next day we visited the last town – Riomaggiore. We bought return boat tickets that cost €20 each.

Romagiorre

One of the most scenic point in Riomaggiore is at the 14th-century Madonna di Montenero sanctuary. So off on another hike we went. It is a 45-60min hike to the sanctuary which sits on the highest point in Riomaggiore over looking the sea. I found it challenging as my legs were still tired from the day before, the hot sun sure didn’t help.. The hike up to the sanctuary was worth every drop of sweat – the view was just amazing.

Terrace vineyards overlooking the sea

Riomaggiore

Hills and more hills to walk up

View of Romagiorre from Madonna di Monetero sanctuary

Corniglia

I thought that Venice had too many tourists, Cinque Terre takes it to another level and it is not even peak season yet! Each time the train or boat arrives, hundreds more people crowd the narrow streets of the towns eager to support the local economy. To visit Cinque Terre you need to have strong legs and knees… By the way, we average 2-4 scoops of gelato per day… Lemon is my favourite and Jeff’s is chocolate hazelnut

May 20 2018

Vacay

A week today we left Vancouver for a three week vacation to Europe. We flew into Gatwick and then took the train to Worcester (pronounced as “wooster”) to visit Jeff’s grandchildren. We enjoyed our time with them, doing things grandparents normally do – play, park, picnic and watched them “dance” at ballet lessons.

After a few days we made our way to Venice from Birmingham Airport with a one hour layover in Paris. I had some concerns about about luggage not making the connection but was assured that it would not be a problem. At the airport we saw a wonderwoman-like character in a mini-skirt complete with a cape. The only thing odd about it is that it was a guy wearing the costume… okay… move along now, nothing to see here. As the plane was descending into Paris, we looked for the Eiffel Tower, not knowing if we were even sitting on the correct side of the plane. And there she was! We could not miss the distinct structure despite the less than clear skies. So.. if you happen to fly to Paris from the UK, you want to be on the right side of the plane.
When we landed in Paris (Charles de Gaulle Airport), we had to go through security and passport inspection again, we were right smack in the middle of a big tour group and took longer than anticipated. We ran to our gates but still arrived too late. We had to see a ticketing agent to get new tickets for a different flight – fortunately it was only a three hour wait instead of next day. Our original flight was delayed for 20mins – because they had to pull our luggage out. It would have been faster if they had let us on!

The winged lion is the symbol for Venice. The open book means the building was constructed during peaceful times and a closed book means it was constructed during a period of conflict

Grand Canal

Gondola ride anyone?

The next morning we made our way to a different part of the neighbourhood to meet our guide Lu-that is short for some italian name no one can remember – for the Venice free walking tour. Lu is a native of Venice and showed us the not so well-known places in Venice. We went to the most beautiful bookstore in the world – beautiful because some of the books sit in boats and tubs that float when the tide rises and they also had a book staircase at the back of the store. I think the book staircase came as an afterthought..

Books stacked high in a little boat

Books in a bath tub

Book staircase to nowhere

We also visited the Rialto Market which has been around for seven centuries.

Fresh produce

Seafood

We walked by a church that is the only one in the world that is built completely out of marble. And if you plan to get married in the church, the wait is three years..

Marble Church

After the tour, Lu recommended a osteria (restaurant) for lunch. She said to avoid any restaurant with pictures of their food and the ones where they have people outside trying to get you to patronize the restaurant. Lunch was somewhat expensive but very tasty. After lunch we walked to get gelato, the real gelato, not tourist grade gelato. We went to Suso which is rated to have the best gelato in Venice, oh my, it was so good! We explored the other sights later in the day. San Marco Basilica was on our list and we paid €3 each to skip the line. Once we got in there was another line to pay €3 if you want to see the altar up close… umm, no thank you. So, we walked on to see the Doge Palace from the outside.. Guess we’re done at St Mark’s Square.. We then walked to another part of Venice to have a front row seat by the canal and sip a Spritz. The Spritz is Italy’s most famous wine-based cocktail and I didn’t care much for it, in fact I struggled to even drink half of it. Yeah, I’m just a lightweight when it comes to booze. We then wandered over to a fancy departmental store that lets tourist access their rooftop deck for free. It is perhaps one of the best views of the city you can get for free.

View from T Fondaco Rooftop Terrace Venice

Venice is a romantic city – we saw a lot of newly weds that were easily identifiable by their shiny rings and googly eyes. Yeah, we’re past that stage, show us where the best food is and we’ll be happy.

Love locks…

After all the sightseeing we walked to a quieter district to have dinner. We sat outside the restaurant by the canal and watched the gondolas go by. The rate for a gondola is €80 for 30 minutes, more if you need singing to go with it.. Somehow the gondola ride is not something that interest either one of us. Our guide had said that if you really want to go in the gondola, just go across the canal for €2 just so you can say you’ve been in one.

Beautiful windows and flowers everywhere..

Dinner was exceptional too and we tried the traditional venetian dish of “sarde in saor” which is sardines prepared with vinegar, fried onions, pine nuts and raisins. After dinner we went back to Suso to get another couple scoops of gelato goodness. Yum!

This morning we took the water bus to the train station. It was interesting seeing all the activities on the canal. The garbage boat, the UPS boat, the ambulance, many delivery boats with cargo from produce to construction supplies and of course wine etc.

Delivery – small packages are thrown to the other worker on the dock

Today we arrived in Cinque Terre. Stay tuned for an update in a couple of days or so..

Mar 24 2018

Spring break at Sun Peaks

See the tall windows between the trees? That’s where we are spending the week.

We are spending a week at Sun Peaks during spring break. We rented a 2 bedroom and loft townhouse with ski-in/ski-out access. But let me tell you, ski-out is a pain. You ski out to a chair, then you ski all the way down Mount Morrisey, pop-off your skis, walk across the street into the main village to get to Tod Mountain and Sundance Mountain where we did most of our skiing.

The second day of skiing.. The obligatory pose for the annual photobook.

Girls in front, boys following behind

 

The kids and I signed up for a 4-hour private ski lesson – just to get back into the groove of things. We skied for 4 days as a family (before I wimped out). The kids also tried doing some jumps – but they didn’t get the big air, just spills and chuckles. Although I am not the best skier, but I managed to ski side by side with Jeff just one time – let me tell you that’s an achievement for me! My nose was running and my mouth was wide open gasping for air but I didn’t let up, I maintained my speed. When we stopped, we both chuckle as he knew I was trying hard to keep up. Anyways, I will have to wait for next season to try that again..

This morning’s sunrise during my walk to the main village

On the morning of the 5th day, overtired, I took a nasty spill on an easy run… yeah, I had enough, those gams ran out of juice. This morning, I woke up with a stiff neck but was determined to walk to the main village with an objective – to scalp my lift ticket for the last day. “Psst, hey mister, you wanna buy a lift ticket?” The third person I asked bought the ticket from me for $60, I can’t complain really.. He was a senior who bought the ticket for his wife and it still worked out cheaper than the window senior rate. He was pretty happy about the savings and I was happy about getting some money back.

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