Toto, We are not in France Anymore

Travel Day!

Tuesday was travel day.  It was time to leave Paris and France and head to Italy!

We flew from Paris to Genoa Italy on Air France.  Thankfully, our flight was in one of the smaller commuter terminals of Charles De Gaulle Airport, so it was quick and easy to get through the airport and onto the plane.

Once we landed in Genoa we took cabs to the train station to make our way to Cinque Terre.  Next to the train station was a monument for Christopher Columbus. 



We had a few hours to wait for our train, so we checked our luggage at the train station and made our way down the street to find some lunch.

We found a nice little place about a block from the train station to have lunch.  We all found it hard to switch from French to Italian, so the poor people who waited on us at that restaurant were getting all combinations of French, Italian, and English from us and our server never spoke one word of English! We were officially off the grid.

 Jamie enjoying a nice Italian wine with lunch

Lunch!

 

When in Italy, you have to have Caprese salad with your meal, it is almost like an unwritten law!

For main meals, Kelly ordered spaghetti with lobster.  She thought is was going to be small baby lobsters mixed in with the pasta.  She must have forgotten she was in Italy and by the ocean, because the meal came out with almost a full size lobster on top!

Jamie and Tari also ordered seafood pasta meals. Jamie ordered a shrimp risotto and Tari went for the pasta del mare with several types of seafood in a red sauce.

 

 Duane went for one of the local dishes, pesto.  In this case the pesto was done three different ways.  1) traditional green pesto 2) white pesto, and 3) walnut pesto.  I think all of us agreed the walnut was by far the best.

We had a few hours to spend before our train to Cinque Terre, so we took our time at the restaurant, checked Facebook, and had another bottle of wine.

 Kelly also took this time to have her first Italian Gelato of the trip.  There were actually two different gelato places right across the street from the place we ate lunch.

Time to Train!

Finally after a few hours and a few bottles of wine, it was time to collect our luggage and board our train to Cinque Terre!

 The trains in Europe come in different sizes, ages, and amenities.  While this train was a smaller commuter one, it did offer assigned seats and beverages for sale.  The beverages came in handy since all we had that day was wine.  

Our good friends, Karyn and David were having a baby at any moment back home, so Tari and Kelly were scoping Facebook looking for any baby news.

Cinque Terre!

Cinque Terre is made up of 5 (cinque) different towns or lands (terre), Monterosso, Vernazza, Cornigila, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.  We were making our home base in Monterosso.  It is the largest of the 5 towns and it is broken into new town and old town.  We will be staying in Old Town.

All of the towns are nestled among the cliffs and the sea, so hills are to be expected.  To help us get from the train station to our hotel, we arranged for one of the three taxis in town to pick us up.

The views from around town.  Most of these were what we saw when we sat outside our hotel, the picture of the waves above was our view while we had dinner that night.  

                  

 We were staying at a lovely hotel named Hotel Villa Steno.  It was nestled half way up a small incline in the old town section of Monterosso.  The outdoor area of the hotel was very pretty to sit in as it was surrounded by flowers, but also by the skyline of the town and sea below you.  As part of the welcome, the hotel gave each guest one free beverage their first night.

We all chose to have Sciacchetra, the local desert wine of Cinque Terre.

Time for Dinner!

The hotel was very nice and welcoming.  They even went so far as to set up dinner reservations for us at a seaside restaurant.

On the way to dinner, we walked through old town and checked out the local shops and various restaurants,

One of the cutest things we saw during our vacation took place in Monterosso.  We walked past a restaurant that had one of its kitchen windows open and a cat was perched on the window sill.  That cat did not care how close anyone got to him or what was going on behind him.  He was focused intently on that kitchen.  As we got closer we realized why, the chefs were prepping the seafood for dinner that night and the cat was waiting for any sort of scrap to be thrown his way!

As we continued our walk to the restaurant we took in the beach scene around us.  There were plenty of fishing boats and boats for tourists to rent for the day.

 Taking a few minutes to enjoy the view before heading to dinner.

 One of the differences between the beach here and in the states is that most of the beaches in Cinque Terre have lounge chairs and umbrellas for patrons to use.  There is normally a cost for this, but it is not much and the beach looks very cute with the umbrellas all up with matching chairs.

You can always tell you are in Italy as the water they bring to the table is Aqua Panna.  I don't know why, it could be the heat, it could be the dehydration, but Aqua Panna water always tastes SO good!

Dinner at Il Casello

We had a wonderful corner table right by the sea to enjoy our dinner.  

So many things on the menu to choose from........

 Our drink choices for the night.  The wine was a local Cinque Terre red.

One of the specialties of the region is anchovies, we tried the restaurants stuffed version during this dinner along with stuffed mussels.  Both were delicious!

Duane, Tari and Jamie all got the fish of the day, a grilled sea bass with lemon.  Kelly went a more traditional route with spaghetti and meat sauce.

 The second bottle of wine with our dinner.

One of the perfect ways to end a meal in Italy, with a nice chilled limoncello.  In the Cinque they actually called it limonchino. Since the towns are so isolated, each one speaks it's own dialect of Italian, even between each of the towns!

 Jamie ordered a cookie, chocolate, brownie thing for desert, they called it the chocolate Cinque Terre cake.

 Tari ordered the Tiramisu.  This was one of the best if not the best she has ever had.  For the rest of the trip every Tiramisu would be judged against this one.

Sunset in Monterosso

As we finished dinner, the sun was setting and Monterosso was settling in for the night.  It was amazing to see how quiet the town got as dinner wrapped up.  The town is pretty busy during the day with different tour groups coming and going along with tourists training in from other nearby towns.  At night it is just the locals though which makes for a peaceful way to end the night.

 On the walk back to the hotel, Kelly stopped for gelato at one of the stores in old town.  

On the walk back to the hotel was a wine shop that was the oldest in Monterosso called Enoteca Internazionale.  They had many local wines, but they also had many Italian wines that were from other regions and older then you would expect.  Duane found a Pio Cesare from 1997 that he purchased to take back to our rooms.

We finished our first night in Monterosso with that bottle on our quiet hotel terrace overlooking the ocean.  Tomorrow is not going to be as peaceful.. tomorrow we hike!

Go to 6/7/17