Florence & Siena

 On the day of our (sad) departure from Cinque Terre, we found out that Trenitalia, (the only train provider in Italy), had decided to go on strike for the weekend, with rotating strikes happening in four hour blocks across the country...great. After many false starts, mystery trains that never showed up, and a diminshing patience for everything Italian, we made it to Florence!! The upside was our hostel had free A/C!

Though crawling with tourists, Florence is still an incredibly beautiful city, with seemingly every building having some major historical significance; I was in awe. Not only is Florence a city of monuments, it's also a city of fashionistas, so Jodi and I put on our best duds and shopped for gold & jewellery on the bridge pictured behind us (Tom wasn't as keen!) Though a major tourist trap, it was still fun to pretend :)

 Thanks to Jodi's travel guidebook, we found a gem of a restaurant tucked away from the typical tourist zones. For 13 euros, we got a 'primo' plate, a 'secondo', 'contodori' (veggies), wine and water. It felt like the real deal, with big tables full to bursting with multi-generational Italian families, and the waiters spoke almost no English. As you can see from the photo, we didn't stray too far from the traditional Italian meal :)primoprimoprim

 After stuffing outrselves with homemade pasta with truffle sauce, we ambled up to the look out, which turned out to be a (not-so) hidden gem! There was a dramatic heat-lightning storm playing out in the clouds behind the Duomo, (Florence's famous cathedral), though it was impossible it capture it in a photo!

After grabbing a delicious gelato (see below), we came across a very Italian scene: a beauitful woman singing Bocelli's 'Con te partiro' accompanied by an accordian player in the middle of an ancient stone 'palazzo'...incredible.

The most delicious gelato can be found at Grom, which uses only the best, and often organic, ingredients for their gelati. Crema di Grom (cookies and cream a la Grom), lampone (raspberry), limone...the list goes on! And apparently, there are Grom locations worldwide - check out the yellowpages and cross your fingers that there's one near you! I wonder if they do franchises...

 How stereotypically Italian is this street?!

 When in Italy...go big or go home!

Here on the left, pecorino & pear gnocchetti, while on the right we have quattro formaggi pizza! I love Italy.

On our last day in Florence, we decided to take a day-trip to Siena, which is only and hour and a half away by train. Siena is, for me, the quintessential Tuscan town, with terracotta tiled roofs and gentle rolling hills in the horizon. Fun Fact: for all you Crayola crayon users out there, the colour 'Burnt Sienna' was inspired by the colour of Siena's buildings!

 

 Oh ho hum, just standing in front of Siena's old town hall, birthplace of the Renaissance. 

Siena was originally Italy's hotspot, and Florence's main rival, until the 14th century when the plague wiped out almost half the city's population, making Siena forever the 'weaker' of the two cities. The Black Death aside, Siena was still an incredibly important cultural center, and just walking down the maze of cobbled streets brings you back centuries.

Inside the Cathedral of Siena was the Piccolomini Library, complete with amazingly detailed frescoes, statues, and orignial hymnals dating back several centuries.  

 After all that culture, refreshments were in order! Jodi found a pizzeria specializing in Neapolitan-style pizza: we're talking seriously thin-crust!

 A view of Siena from the top of the museum, a building which was orignially going to be a church built to rival Florence's Duomo, but after the Plague wiped out the workforce, the plan got scraped - now it serves as one of the best vantage points for tourists!

Caffe coretto: the perfect way to end an incredible Italian adventure! Coretto means 'corrected' with alcohol - usually an espresso served with grappa, but after trying it with unsuccessful results, we opted for amaretto, which proved to be a delicious digestif :)

That's all for our whirlwind Cinque Terre-Florence-Siena tour...next stop Chioggia and Venice! More to come.....

We're baaaack!

Corniglia: our Paradise for three days..I understand why it's a World Heritage Site!

Hello again everyone, and sorry for our prolonged absence!! We're now in Austria, but we've had many travels between France and here! So hang on to your hats and welcome to ITALIA!

First stop: the Cinque Terre.

(Disclaimer: please be prepared for an overabundance of ocean photos...I apologize in advance!)

 

We started our trip in Corniglia, the middle of the five villages (as pictured at the top). According to the guide books, it is the only village without a beach, but the photo above says otherwise. But that untruth, paired with the 400 stairs required to walk up from the train station, has ensured that Corniglia is also one of the quietest of the five, something we all enjoyed! 

Situated on the Ligurian coast, (the birthplace of pesto!), the ocean surrounding CInque Terre was incredible: I've never seen such clear, turquoise water.

This is a place I would DEFINITELY visit again!

For two out of the three nights we stayed in an incredible 2-storey apartment that we rented from a true Italian Mama - when we first met her, she was cooking a tomato sauce in her summer kitchen downstairs, dressed to the nines in the tradtional Mama-frock! The town itself was lovely, with mainly locals, and few tourists - naturally, we came to think of ourselves as part Italian by the end (note Tom's very Italian expression in the photo), also signified by our laundry line over the main street!

Corniglia in the background, surrounded by terraced fields of vineyards.

 The only way to get to most of the villages is to walk, (unless you feel like forking over big bucks for a boat). Due to major flooding last year, the main hiking trail between Corniglia and Manarola, (our neighbour to the east), was closed. This meant the alternative: basically  going straight up the mountain behind Corniglia for about an hour, and then inching our way between vineyards, hoping noone suffers from vertigo! The whining aside, (I'm not sure how Tom and Jodi put up with me!), the views were breathtaking, so in hindsight, it was worth it :)

Surprisingly, the Cinque Terre has a thriving, but localized, wine industry. They specialize in a white (called CInque Terre), and a sweet dessert wine called sciacchetra. The hills around the villages house the vines, but they are so steep that the farmers have installed various funicular-type machines to transport the grapes down to the actual farms.   

Jodi and Tom after the death-defying climb; we were all smiles once we reached the terraces!

 

Boy were we happy when we finally saw Manarola!! We stopped for a well-deserved pesto pizza and some Italian beer (sorry, no photo of the pizza - we were too hungry!)

Manarola, along with the other four villages, are still working fishing villages, so it was neat to see all the fishing boats lining the harbours and people bringing in the day's catch.

Though there weren't many restaurants to choose from in Corniglia, we did find some gems! We had some incredible tiramisu at one of the cafes, (Anita, I wish you could have been there!), along with their house mojitos another night!

Our hike the next day proved to be pretty easy after our previous trek - we went the other way, direction Vernazza and Monterosso. It proved to be relatively flat, though with a few climbs that had me dreaming of gelato a swim in the tantalizing waters below. 

The photo above was of a picture-perfect beach, but we couldn't figure out how to get down, which was very frustrating, especially when we could vaguely see people lying on the white sand! As it turns out, it is Cinque Terre's only nude beach, and can only be accessed by walking through an old train tunnel a km long, with no lights. So in the end, we were happy with our swimming hole!

Vernazza! (With Monterosso in the distance).

 

Our fabulous picnic by the sea: fresh foccacia, sundried tomatoes, mozzarella and of course, pesto alla genovese!!

We sadly had to say Ciao to the Cinque Terre, but next stop: Florence & Siena, the next stop for the Italian edition of the blog!

 

La Fete Nationale!

 We started off la 14 juillet/Bastille Day/la fete nationale with an incredible brunch (thank you Jodi!) and some beautiful sunshine!

Bastille Day Brunch: eggs benedict with a roasted pepper + goat cheese sauce, asparagus and avocado. This was served with apricot rum mojitos! (We even made the rum - local apricot peel soaking in some ridiculously strong rum for a week = perfect brunch fare!)

 We headed to Lac Montriond for an outdoor 5 a 7. I rode Math's motorcycle for the first time (terrifying), and then shared some local beer to help calm the nerves! 

Math took us to Evian to watch the fireworks. They took place in the middle of Lac Leman, so the setting was stunning - the city of Evian turned off their lights, so it was even more dramatic. THe lights on the far shore are Switzerland! 

The day before, we went for a hike up one of the ski hills - luckily for me, you're able to drive quite a ways up, so the hike 'only' lasted an hour! The view at the end was worth it, though. The photo above is Jodi at the peak.

Another shot of the spectacular view, and all the lovely wildflowers. 

 After such a physically exhausting day, we definitley deserved a very cheesy meal - please welcome the tartiflette, a local delicacy. It's basically a bed of potatoes, onions, cream and rosemary, and then an entire wheel of Reblochon cheese on top - I don't think I need to tell you how absolutely delicious it was! Anything covered in melted cheese gets my vote!

The main meal was followed by another local speciality: chartreuse, a liqueur made monks! It's extremely strong (55%), but it's surprisingly tasty. 

 We tried a recipe from one of Jodi's fave cookbooks: it's a goat cheese + pesto + sundried tomato tapenade terrine, with a drizzle of balsamic vinagrette reduction. Served with some rosemary olive crostinis, it's heaven on earth. TRY THIS AT HOME!

The delicious terrine was followed by a salade nicoise, with ingredients from the Morzine market! (Abd obviously served with a delicious glass of rose)

Sadly, this will be the last blog coming to you form Morzine...we're off to ITALIA tomorrow! More posts to come from the land of gelato, grappa and pesto....!

Tour de France - stage 10

We wore our flashiest outfits for the Tour, in the hopes that we'd make it on-camera! I don't think it worked.  we did end up finding a great rooftop vantage point 300 m from the finish line!

Tom scored us some sweet hats to help cheer on the cyclists :) And boy did we look gooood!

About half an hour before the riders were due to arrive, an entire flotilla of cars and trucks went by for a solid 40 minutes, with the intent of getting the crowd pumped up, and to give away millions of useless things! People go NUTS for free stuff, as we witnessed as men battled children for keychains, and mothers with babes-in-arms pushed battled the crowds for frisbees and pens. I particularly liked the float above, as it's a bread basket!

Vittel water was one of the major sponsors, so they had float after float of cars made as water bottles, and many of the floats had people spraying the crowd, which would have been nice if it was +30, but on a cloudy day, it was unnecessary! 

One of the first packs of riders (not the winner, Voeckler - we have a video of the sprint finish, and I'm not sure how to upload video yet!)

Up close and personal as they sprinted to the finish line.  

Jodi and I in our ladybug hats!

After such an exciting day, we needed refreshments, so Jodi stopped and picked up a hot dog, though in France they don't use our traditional buns - oh no, they use half a baguette! I don't know what tool they use, but they extract the middle of the bun without cutting the bottom, so none of your condiments fall out - genius!

Paradise is a pedalo

Jodi took us to a hidden gem of a town: Annecy. It's about a two hour drive from Morzine, but it was worth it! It has a beautiful lake with water the colour of the Caribbean and mountains circling it. The lake then funnels into a river that flows through the town (as seen above) The river is lined with restaurants, ice cream shops (!!), cafes, you name it! 

...the lake, complete with a fountain and PEDALOS! It's clearly a thriving business - when you equip your pedalo with either deck chairs or water slides, get ready for a fun-filled, sun-soaked day on the water! By the time we finally docked our pleasure craft, the lake was full of pedalos, some shaped like ferraris, some full of suntanning nudists. Life is good in Annecy. 

A bakery we stumbled upon on the pedestrian streets winding alongside the river. Though it's hard to tell from the photo, the bottom row are 'maxi' size - that pain au chocolat on the left is literally a foot long, and only 2.50 euros! What a steal. They must get a lot of American tourists looking for supersized treats...

Another shot of the lake from a castle high up at the top of the town. I was so excited to find another castle, but it turned out to be a contemporary art gallery, so sadly there were no restored throne rooms or dungeons. But the view was certainly worth the entrance fee. 

Tom enjoying our panini picnic lunch on the deck of our yacht.

And the piece de resistance: the water slide! We probably had the most fun on the lake for that one hour - the possibilities were pretty endless, and far too many photos were taken! We were certainly the envy of the people who only opted for deck chairs on their pedalos, and Jodi was most definitely Queen of the Slide.

And finally, one last shot of Annecy, complete with swans. 

The next day we ventured to Chamonix Mont-Blanc, home of the famous ski resort and glacier. I took probably 50 photos, but none could really capture the enormity of the many jagged peaks; it is truly awe-inspiring. When we first arrived, it was really cloudy, but after lunch, the sun came out and we were graced with a view of the peak (not in this photo: check out below) It still amazes me that there can still be snow! That fact became very real when an avalanche occurred today, killing a group of mountaineers - I wouldn't think that could happen in July. 

Another shot of Mont Blanc, as seen from the town (we'd just finished our ice cream cones!)

I love the old advertising posters - they are all over the tourist shops, but they have an enduring charm. 

An old viaduct over the highway heading home.