Ciao Pescara!

Our last week in Pescara is almost over, and we have managed to keep amused and not get too much cabin fever. Summer is officially over now, the weather has been pleasant sunny autumn days but there has been a lot more rain and storms. The beach is transforming into winter mode as the beach clubs remove the chairs and umbrellas and Pescara is getting a lot more quiet.

But I still need to catch up on our travels from the last two weeks!

So after returning from Sorrento we had the usual weekend back in Pescara, although on the Friday Niccola and Riccardo (Carlo's cousins) took us on a tour of Abruzzo. We went to Sulmona which we kept being told was famous for confetti. We really didn't understand why a whole town would make coloured hole-punch holes but actually confetti is sugared almonds. But they weren't just the white kind you often see as bombonieri at Italian weddings, they were all sorts of colours and so much more!

We stopped at this small and quaint town called Scanno where some on the residents dress up in traditional costume everyday. It was like being back in Kyoto hunting geisha's as we wandered the streets trying to find one. We did find this one old Nonna on her steps but she bluntly refused a photo with me, so we took one anyway. As the sun set we arrived at Lake Scanno and went around it on a paddle boat, I really love paddle boats! It was so beautiful and tranquil - now one of my favourite parts of Abruzzo.

We also had probably the last day at the beach on the Saturday. We finally got bikes and cruised down to Carlo's Zia's umbrella and spent a few hours with her. How cool is she?!

After the meeting on Sunday we then hopped another Ryan Air flight to Barcelona. We booked a hotel recommended to us by Gabbi (thanks!) and we really loved its modern design, especially the mosaic tiles that I think we will try and recreate in our bathroom and also the roof top bar and pool.

I was a little apprehensive going to Barcelona after yet again reading too many internet guides about the dangers of the very efficient pick-pockets. So we prepared our money strategy and Carlo got the pleasure of wearing a money belt the whole time with extra cash and our credit cards. Although for the entire time we were there we felt safe, even in La Rambla which is supposed to be pick-pocket central. I suppose because we were more alert to the dangers and we were well prepared. Some travellers though weren't so lucky, one guy at our hotel told us he was pick-pocketed on the metro and they stole his wallet with €1000 in it, but really you should never carry around that much money in your back pocket anywhere! We also overheard another couple arrive at the hotel saying their carry-on bag was stolen with all of they passports, money and credit cards. Yikes!

Anyway, our first full day was Gaudi themed as we tried to see as much Gaudi architecture as we could. We set out on foot as we were still a little apprehensive of the metro with Carlo carrying the big camera and the first stop was Sagrada Famllia. The line to get in snaked half way around the building so we decided to skip it, but definitely saw enough from the outside to be amazed.

Next stop was Parc Güell, which seemed not to far away to reach on foot. Still being scared tourists we didn't want to have our head in a map telling the world we were tourists with lots to steal (not that the camera and no Spanish skills wasn't already doing that) so we tried to get there by memory. We got close, but ended up asking a group of old ladies on the street for directions. This one lady said something in Spanish but realised we had no idea so she kindly walked us close to the park. Along the way she was talking to us in Spanish and we tried to talk to her in Italian as it's the closest language we know. Somehow it all worked out and we made it to the park.

This is definitely our favourite part of Barcelona, and it was helped along by lots of buskers playing Spanish guitar which I have a soft spot for.

After cruising around the park getting wooed by the guitar and grabbing lunch in a little bar where I had the best tomato bread (apparently a Catalan speciality) with ham sandwich we headed back towards the old part of Barcelona looking for more Gaudi. We found quite a few apartment blocks, one of which is open to the public but yet again the line was just too long to go inside and we are too impatient to wait more than an hour in a line...actually, more than 5 minutes is too much!

We attempted to get down as far as La Rambla - a main walking street that goes through the middle of the old part of Barcelona but were sidetracked by possibly the coolest shop in the world, Vinçon. It had heaps of modern design things - from pencils and stationary to lights, toys, kitchen wares and furniture. We got lost in there for quite a while, debated whether it would cost too much to ship some of the furniture back home and, amongst other things, Carlo bought a decal for his Apple lap-top that transforms the Apple logo into a face.

That evening we decided to treat ourselves to a nice restaurant dinner so we headed to a local restaurant on the hotel's recommendation. It all started well, some cava (Spanish sparking wine) more tomato bread but this time with some outstanding aioli which I initially thought was lard and a selection of Iberian ham. We finished our starters and then I got very sick. Our mains arrived while I was acquainting myself with the toilet, I ate nothing but Carlo finished his and we raced back to the hotel in a taxi. What a disaster! This unfortunately marred the rest of our trip in Barcelona as I didn't feel well for a few days.

The next day we only managed one thing - the Joan Miro Foundation. Miro is one of my favourite artists and this is the largest single collection of his work in the world. Carlo however is not even close to a fan, he thinks the art is childish and he could do better. There are no photos of the art as we were not allowed, but here is one of my favourite paintings by Miro. Childish? pphhhtt!

Our final full day in Barcelona was a little more productive as I was feeling a little better, so we decided to wander around the Gothic town including La Rambla and, to feel more relaxed, without the big camera. It was a fantastic day, a little shopping a little people watching, there is nothing finer. We found some cool clothes and Carlo brought yet another pair of shoes. I think he is up to 4 pairs now! We also came very close to buying a gigantic piece of art from a gallery we stumbled across, but after much debating decided we could buy more shoes with that money.

We saw a little market with amazing fresh fruit and vegetables as well as amazing fish shops with all the fruits of the sea. It is easy to see in places like this just how much humans are raping the sea for food. Speaking of raping did I say how much Carlo's shoes cost? Ha, but he hasn't caught up to me yet with shopping expenditure.

When we got back to Pescara we were determined to crack the service appointments caper. It was not easy but we actually managed to make two appointments and keep them. For one we went on territory where we go to seek out english speaking people (mostly Nigerians) in their homes. For the second one we went to the market in Pescara, walking around the market looking for Africans and anyone else that spoke english. It was a little daunting at first but after we got into the swing of things it was more fun, and when we finished we bought some porchetta for lunch from the vendors selling this amazing whole roasted pork at the market. Why is it that roasted pork is such a good end to a witnessing day?

Carlo's 3 cousins - Bruna, Cinzia and Sabrina - took us shopping in the outlet area near Ancona. We started at the Prada outlet where I liked everything, but it was still super expensive even though most of the items were half price. We also went to a few shoe and handbag factories where they were preparing samples for the shows in Milan for Spring/Summer 2011! I never really understood just how far ahead the fashion industry is. It was so overwhelming there as we really didn't understand what was going on as Carlo's cousins whizzed around and somehow bought with cash some of the samples.

In this week we also took a day trip up to San Marino, an small independent country about 3 hours north of Pescara. It is completely landlocked and surrounded by Italy but somehow over the years they have remained independent. The capital city, San Marino was breathtakingly beautiful. It is a walled city perched high on the top of a cliff faced mountain and has views all the way to the Adriatic, but the city itself is the weirdest place we have been so far.

All the shops were super touristy, and for some reason marketed to the Russian tourist. They also sold lots of small arms like ninja stars, samurai swords and BB guns in every imaginable shape and size - from hand-guns to full on looking machine guns. It was so strange!

So that has been our last week in Pescara and think we are going to miss this place. It has been a great place to base ourselves during the summer, the family have been so hospitable and so have the new friends we made in the congregation. The witnessing has been a little hard to understand so we are definitely looking forward to coming back to the super-organised Hawthorn!

So now we have caught up! Tomorrow we head to Rome and spend the next month making our way back to Paris.

Ti Amo

I think we are finally getting Italy cabin fever and are keen to head off somewhere different. Another week in Pescara until then though, we may lose it!

So after returning from Vernazza with no incidents driving the crazy roads we spent the Thursday to Sunday in Pescara. We had a big dinner at Carlo's Zio Valentino's place which is up near Chieti.

He has a small property with fruit trees, chickens and rabbits (and apparently that night we ate one of them). The food was delicious and almost all from his garden, the highlight being the arrosticini.

David is apparently the spitting image of Zio Valentino, but I'll let you decide.

From left to right: Zia Emma, Zio Valentino, Zia Norina and her husband Zio Zopitto.

Anyway after a weekend in Pescara we got a little restless and felt the first nudges of homesickness so we decided to do something fun - Pompeii and Amalfi.

After arriving at our B&B just outside of Sorrento we hopped in the car and drove the amazing, windy and narrow road to Positano. The scenery was just so striking with steep, sharp cliffs rising straight out of the blue mediterranean and houses carved into the rock, almost defying gravity. The road was insane, so narrow at parts and so many traffic jams as buses try and navigate through.

We scored a great and free park just outside of the town (Carlo is just the same here as back home! ha) and wandered the steep and sometimes endless steps of the town. After this we joined the tanned natives on the pebbled beach.

We went for a swim in some of the best water ever, so clear we could see fish swimming around and so buoyant we could float vertically without treading in order to keep our heads above water. Carlo also had to save a group of young girls on a blow-up mattress thing as they were being pushed down the beach by the current. It was so funny seeing Carlo hold onto the back and kick frantically like an outboard motor as the three girls perched themselves up on the front like they were taking some ride. Guess you had to be there.

The next day we went to Pompeii. I found it fascinating learning about the history of Roman cities and imagining what they would have been like to live in.

It was also quite sad considering the sudden way many of the inhabitants died when Versuvius erupted. These are plaster casts the archeologists made when excavating the city as underneath the ash were cavities where people or animals had suddenly died from the gas from the volcano then been buried. Some casts were able to make out people's faces and expressions.

Carlo however found it a little boring a repetitive after a while, but we did spend a good 4 hours walking the streets in the hot sun.

The next day we grabbed a ferry over to the island of Capri, which is just a huge rock mass that rises straight up out of the ocean. It was spectacular.

On arrival we quickly got onto a boat that toured the island and we got to see famous people's houses like the former summer house of Mussolini and the houses of Giorgio Armani and Sophia Loren. We also got to get into a tiny row boat and go through the tiniest hole and into the blue grotto.

Amazing, beautiful, amazing.

But after waiting in line with 10 other tour boats at the entrance I got to feel very sea sick, along with this little boy who managed to stink out the entire boat with his sickness.

The rest of the day was somewhat ruined as I felt sick for hours so we headed back to Sorrento for a relax on the "beach".

That evening we were very exhausted, and were pleasantly surprised when the B&B owner knocked on our door with a the most delicious home-made wood fired pizza. The pizza aside, the Amalfi Coast is definitely somewhere I could go again.

That is probably enough for now, next blog will have Barcelona as well as some more tours of Abruzzo.

Arrosticini, where have you been all our lives?

The weather seems to have taken a turn in Pescara so we have a little bit of time to read, walk around without coming home drenched in sweat and more importantly to blog! Hopefully the sun returns as I need to get a little browner.

A few days after our return from London (this time without any issues, thanks Ryan Air) our friend Alanna came to visit for a few days. We made up a very sad looking bed in the spare room but we were excited to show her the place we sort of feel like is our home away from home in Italy.

That evening Alessandro introduced us to the joys of the local speciality arrosticini! When we were ordering we had to negotiate him down to just 50 between the 4 of us, apparently there is always a strange competition/torture on who can eat the most! We didn't know what to expect, but on arrival they were small sticks of lamb/mutton cooked over open coals with just salt and oil. They were delicious, but I could only manage 8 whereas the boys were into double figures.

We have now settled into the routine that will cover the rest of our time in Pescara. Sunday afternoon/Monday to Thursday go a see something then Thursday night to Sunday stay in Pescara for the meetings etc. As Alanna was with us we stayed the whole week in Pescara but took day trips.

The first day trip was planned by opening up Google maps and pointing randomly at a destination that looked reachable. We discovered a place called Castiglione del Lago which looked interesting so we packed the car and left for the 4 hour drive. It was indeed interesting, a walled city and fort that dated back to the 11th century on the banks of Lake Trasimeno.

There were beautiful frescos detailing the owners military pursuits, a weird and claustrophobic walkway from the abbey to the fort and we were able to climb all over the fort.

The shops in the walled city sold some interesting produce such delicious wild boar salami and local truffles. I now have a better appreciation for what real truffles taste like as before I think I'd only had the fake stuff. It is strangely delicious and the flavour lingers in your mouth all day.

After lunch we headed off to Siena as it wasn't that far away. A popular and beautiful walled city in Tuscany with narrow cobbled streets and
two very famous attractions.

The cathedral (which we didn't get to go inside of as it was closed for mass)

and the piazza which was being prepared for the even more famous horse race.

We wandered around, had some of the worst gelati in Italy but then found some boys from the town practising their flag throwing. An old Nonna was also watching on and accosted Alessandro and I for a 15 minute summary of the history of Siena.

We left just as the sun was setting which cast a beautiful light on the rolling hills and villas of Tuscany as we made the 5 hour drive back to Pescara.

The next day we decided to keep it more local so we went to the town of L'Aquila - made famous when a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit just over a year ago. Even after a year the place is like a ghost town as many of the buildings, both old and new are uninhabitable. Some buildings fell down, but most suffered such severe structural damage that they are being held up by an intricate network of reinforced scaffolding.

The old town of course suffered the most, and there is much conjecture about the rebuilding of it all. There were lots of protest signs basically conveying the peoples anger and frustration at being forced out of their homes with no clear path back to them. The most interesting was where the owners had tied their now useless keys to the fences.

To me the place was sad, it is clearly ruined and the rebuilding will take more money than the government or charity can provide. But the people of L'Aquila are holding fast onto the past, the history and heritage of the place and want it restored exactly how it was.

The next stop was Gran Sasso - the highest mountain in the Apennines mountain range. It's enormity and grandness was breathtaking.

After Alanna left we didn't do a lot - the beach, visited Alessadro's Nonno and went to a Sheep themed party where you had to wear either black or white and on the menu was more arrosticini!

After the weekend our next trip on the agenda was to visit Carlo's Zia (on his Dad's side) in Cecina and at the same time take in Lucca, Pisa and the Cinque Terre.

We stayed in a hard to find hotel just outside of Lucca. The hotel was surrounded by forest and grand villas, just like the post cards.

Lucca is a walled city but the walls are so thick that they have become a circuit on which you can walk or ride around the city. We arrived quite late and had 30 mins to ride our hire bikes around the walls, it was good exercise!

Before it got dark we did a quick tour of the city, they most remarkable thing we saw was a tower with trees growing out of the top.

The next day we went to Pisa. We entered the tourist hell for just over an hour to see the tower before we headed off to Carlo's aunts for lunch.

The tower was smaller than I thought but it was beautiful and so intricate. Now that the restoration has been completed it is possible to go up, but it was a good 5 or 6 hour wait till the next available group so we skipped it.

It was funny to see everyone do the mandatory photo holding up the tower but of course we had to join in to the insanity!

These sorts of religious monuments while beautiful, for me are also bittersweet. I can never stop thinking that at the time of this massive investment in vanity for the Church what else was going on in the world. Seems like a rather big misappropriation of money to me, so I sort of don't enjoy the spectacle as much.

At lunch we met some of Carlo's dad's family. Zia Emanuela didn't look too much like any of Carlo's siblings but she had so many mannerisms like them, especially a giggle that reminded me so much of Ethan. Genes are incredible!

All the guide books and internet pages I found said firmly not to drive to the Cinque Terre towns. So with much apprehension in my heart we set off the next morning from Lucca up towards the "Italian Riviera" in our car. The Cinque Terre is a 15 mile stretch of the Ligurian coast (just south of Genova) that is World Heritage listed. There are 5 towns built into the steep hills that rise almost vertically out of the ocean. All the hills are cut into terraces for farming - vines, olive trees etc.

We followed our GPS into the hills and Carlo drove with relative ease to the parking area of the town we were staying in, Vernazza. Sure the road was windy and narrow but I didn't feel nearly as scared as I was at Lago di Como. I am getting the feeling that a lot of tourist guides that I read really overstate things.

What the guides didn't overstate however was the beauty of the place, especially Vernazza with its boat harbour and colourful buildings.

The Cinque Terre however is just overrun with tourists. When we arrived we were inundated with people in their full hiking gear traipsing all over the town. That I thought was a little funny, I am sure the farmers who built those terraces and climb them every day don't need a visit to Mountain Designs to prepare. In the Cinque Terre the number of foreigners far out weigh any locals which is a shame as it really transforms a place. Loud english speakers drown out the few speaking Italian, the gelati vendors become stingy and the few locals that are around seem a little disgruntled. But it's still possible to climb the stairs of the streets and spot a Nonna or two navigating the steep passageways in their afternoon best.

We had some intention of joining the hikers out on the paths that connect the towns together, but even though we are on holiday I still get the odd headache and that day I was feeling very precious. Nonetheless we put on our underused walking shoes and caught the train to the next town, Monterosso. Compared to Vernazza it was quite dull so we ate lunch and headed back (on the train again). I feel a little defeated that we didn't walk much or see all the 5 towns, but I will just keep telling myself that Vernazza is the most beautiful of them all.

That should be enough for now, we are now only a week behind in blogs. Next will be the Amalfi Coast and Barcelona!