Cinque Terre Last Pics

 

So this is one of my favorite pics of this whole trip.  I don't know why, it just speaks to me.

It reminds me of  a different way of life. And of something that most people in general,  have  lost along the way while trying to "keep up with the Jones'  ...  Its the simplicity of life.  Slower, more relaxed, more enjoyed, healthier by far.   

I can only imagine how the lives have changed for the locals in these tiny little towns, since tourism has become the main driving force of income in this area. 

I saw alot of shopkeepers that looked really tired, and not all that happy to be open some days, due to the increased amount of people who are visiting daily here.  That was a new sight for me. 

Having grown up in a small tourist town myself I recognized the look they had on their faces and I could relate to how they seemed to feel.  It looked like it had been a long long season for them and they still had a month yet to go. 

                                       

  One night we went to Vernazza on the train w/ G & J to check out an after dinner place, and I took this  while we were waiting for the train to take us back to Manarola.         Please stand BEHIND the yellow line.  They don't always slow down in these tunnels.   

Riomaggiorre

This is the first of the five towns.  We were staying in the second.  Only a 20 minute walk from one to the other.  this town had a similar layout and overall look but is a bit smaller.

The fruits and veggies here were so ripe juicy and fresh.  Not picked two months too early, shipped on trucks to the other side of the world and then treated with chemicals to make them look and taste like fresh fruit.   Oops, did that sound salty?  Sorry.               It was also very inexpensive shopping here. 

This was the train station in... you guessed it... Manarola.  Don't forget... "Stand behind the yellow line."

Cinque Terre (the five lands)

So  here we are.  Manarola.  Cinque Terre has been one of my most favorite places in this world for many years.  The scenery is beyond your imagination.  Pastel colored buildings perched out over the cliffsides, timeless, with water so crystal clear and deep blue it is almost purple. 

It is 5 VERY small towns connected by a walking trail and a small railway. 

You can only drive to 2 of them.  Those towns are larger and more crowded.

This region used to be very quaint small poor fishing villages with no real income to speak of until they developed more fully the olive groves  and grape vineyards and some of a few local fruits grown here to sell at market.  The white wine here is light, fruity, fantastic, and very inexpensive.

    The biggest dollar producer here now is tourism.    And we helped feed the machine.    This is the view from our rooms up on the hill.  We counted.  78 steps  From the main street in town to the rooms. And Newton and Karen were one level up above us in the house.  I was told it was 22 steps when I booked this apartment.   HA    Perhaps there was a miscommunication going on between my crappy Italian and the nice lady who rented to us.  And the apartments were very nice?  So what could I do?  Once we got there, we did not want to leave.     Not only was it way up there, but the view was worth a million bucks.                                                             Way in the distance in the up right hand corner you can see another town along the water (7 miles away) called Monterrosso.  It was the farthest away town from us.  The walking trail you can see is called "Lover's Lane".     These first two towns it is mostly flat and level and an easy walk,  unlike the other end between Vernazza and Monterroso.  THAT is a full on and difficult 3 hour HIKE uphill.  Just ask Newton and Karen :) 

These little boats live on roller carts and when the men go out fishing they literally push them down the street and splash them at the ramp at the waterfront.  It is old fashioned and simple but still works.  We ate fresh seafood all four nights we were here.    Mussells, Clams, Shrimp, Lobsters, Langostino's,  Anchovies, Sardines, The fresh fish was readily  available and could be cooked any way you wanted it.   

                                   

This is a closer view of the walking trail Lovers Lane.  Here it was wide and paved.  In the upper left side is a pink bunch of buildings looking out over the water.  That is where our apartment was. 
Location Location Location.

Next Stop... Monaco

Well, that's not exactly true.  The next stop was Lyon, FR,  but it was fast and furious and just one night.  But Lyon is getting passed up here.  Sorry.  We love Lyon too, there are many great restaurants in that city and we would have liked to have stayed a few days there.  But, this time, it was just an in between stopover and I'm running out of daylight here.

As for Monaco, we have been through this town a number of times by train, and have never stopped.  You can not see it while going through it cause the train station is IN a tunnel!  You can see beautiful sweeping vistas on both sides of the mountainside approaching it but that's about it.  This year we MADE it our stop on the way from France to Italy.  Finally!

We left Lyon, FR and went by train 4 hrs to Monaco.  The great thing that happens on this part of the trip is we start seeing the oceanside.  The Med.  It is so deep blue and beautiful.

                                                     Our timing turned out to be perfect here.   Two days before we arrived the Monaco Yacht Show ended.  It took place in this harbor.  We would not have found a room within 50 miles of here 3 days ago. For the most part its over but a lot of the yachts were still moored here.

This city is a giant series of Condos and apartments and obscenely expensive homes built out from the hillside in a sweeping panarama over the harbor.  It was really beautiful.   We were told the only way you can get residency here is to be born here.  You can't "buy" one like in so many other places.

Monaco was elegant, and spotless.  I did not see trash or even a cigarette butt on the ground anywhere.

Just walking the streets for a couple hours that evening before dinner, I felt severly underdressed for this glitzy place in my tennis shoes and blue jeans.    Oh well, what's an island girl to do?

Fireworks at Rocamadour

There are a few pics left that I thought were fun and did not want to leave out so
I am including them here...

As you can see the night before balloon festival it was chilly out.  That night we all walked out at 10:om to watch the light show over head.  Each year they shoot off fireworks to celebrate the party

and from our street it looked like the top of the castle was exploding.  It was really cool.

Warning: Foie Gras Crossing

Sept 25th  (I think)

I feel it would be remiss of me  to not show my respect by way of mention to the Foie Gras Gods who are responsible for the (literally) POUNDS of Foie Gras we have eaten as a group so far on this adventure.  (aren't they cute)

Some brands are better than others, certainly. 

But we have had several that were so much like butter it just melted in our mouths.  Then to combine that flavor with fresh roasted figs, with honey drizzled over top and lightly stuffed with a great blue, accompannied by a nice bordeaux... I am telling you it is heavenly.  It has been incredible. 


I'd like to tip my hat to those responsible who have supplied us with this delicacy to be enjoyed until it is coming out of our ears.  It took about 3 weeks but we finally started saying, "Honestly, I can't eat anymore." 

On the day were driving to Rocamadour we spotted this farm on the side of the road.  Knowing what it was I just had to get out and take a closer look at these little cuties. 

As we got out of the car and approached this fence they all hurried over in a large group to see what we were up too.  They were just hanging out.  It looked like they were ready for lunch. 

Watching them made me start thinking about lunch.  :)

Rocamadour

It is truly amazing how people built homes, castles, and full on TOWNS directly on the cliffsides.  Back in the 1100's when this town was being established by massive pilgramages of thousands of people to come and  worship in this church, towns were being attatcked and overtaken on a regular basis.

It seems the popular thing to do was build on the cliff face so if anyone was trying to approach they would be seen before hand.

Without our modern day engineering available, it is beyond me how they ever accomplished the building they did then.

This town is just stunning, and very small, and in it there are 7 churches, if you can believe that. 

I had to get up VERY early in the morning to get a picture of the streets in this town without crowds of people there wandering.  We are finding many more tourists everywhere we go than we ever have. :(

Of all the pictures I have taken on this trip so far,

I am up to about 800, (its ok, you can laugh)

this is one of my favorites...

Rocamadour S France

This is another highlight of this trip.  We've seen this balloon festival several different years now. 

It is always fun. And it starts Early in the mornings.  I've learned to manipulate the exposure setttings
on my camera because when I took these first few pictures, it was just after daybreak and there was not
a lot of light surrounding us.  In fact, there was still quite a bit  of fog wafting through this valley at times.

The balloons land in this narrow valley at the foot of Rocamadour on Sat afternoon and the next morning over a 3 hour period about 30 balloons inflate slowly, and float up and down, creating quite a show.,

Eventually they drift away, a couple at a time, with the breeze. 

Just after sunrise the activity in the valley starts.  The support vans with the balloon baskets come streaming down the hillside (seen in the background), it almost looks like they are in a race.  And immediately start  to

inflate the balloons.  You can hear them before you can see them.  Then they slowly start to pop up like brightly colored snow-cones clustered into a small area in this very narrow valley below.  A couple at a time, they gently and slowly lift off! 

Canoe Trip Page 2

I can only put so many pics on each page or the computer starts to freak out, so wanted to just throw in a couple others from that day.

We were just approaching our little town at this point.  La Roque Gageac.



  Here we were approaching Beynac Castle in the next town over from us.  At the top of the hill you can see the Castle.  We walked up there one day and wandered around.  It was another great view of the river and the valley.



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Canoe Trip on River

I've lost track of what day it is. imagine that. 

One of my personal most memorable days on

this trip so far was the day we hired canoes and

floated down the river together.  It took a couple

hours.  We did more floating laughing wine-ing and cheese-ing than we did paddling.  It was great!

The river was really clean and clear, and the

scenery was fantastic.  As you can see, we could

not have asked for better weather.

 It was obvious Newton had spent many a day on a river.  He did great effortlessly manuvering the apparatus.  I have to admit I was proud of him.  He didn't exactly fit into that little seat in the back.  :)
He pretty much looked like a bear on a rollerskate in that canoe.

Speaking of bears on a rollerskate ?

And now for our next act...    The people in the front of the boats had the coolers, and the people in the backs had empty glasses, so we had to get creative.  "Could ya please pass the jelly?"          We pulled up on a beachy area about halfway through our trip, and had a really fun lunch.  Fresh baked baguettes, 5 kinds of cheese, 3 types of Foie Gras, and of course, you know the rest of the story...Wine...nice, light, fruity, yippee.  Jody has pictures of the picnic and when she sits down long enough to check email we'll have her send me a couple of those so I can add them to this page.  You'll have to check here again later.

Chef at Dordogne House

Kitty, the owner of the house suggested if we were

interested she'd make arrangements for us to

ahve a personal chef come in and cook for us

one night.  That sounded great and it WAS great. 

He started us off with a chilled melon and mint soup.

It was excellent.  There wasn't a drop left.

I am usually not a chilled soup person, but my cup  was licked dry too.

His name was Dimitri.  He was nice and very professional and made a 3 course  meal for us including home made "death by chocolate" type dessert.    All I can say is Yummo!

This salad was fresh local greens, herbs, roasted red peppers, delicious vine ripe tomatoes and a warm piece of Chevre (with a great nose) alongside hand carved tomatoe roses.  Very creative.  We paired our courses with very nice red wines from the region which we purchased from the wine cave just above the house on the back road.  I can't tell you how nice it was (and funny) to  walk out the back door, and 30 steps away there was a wine cave open all the time.  The lady was really nice and friendly too.

Main Course... Roasted Lamb topped with herbed bread crumbs with stuffed tomatoe, roasted garlic a beautiful delicate sauce drizzled over top and broccollini.  Just gorgeous. 

It started getting cool outside so we moved in alongside the fire to enjoy dessert.  It was fantastic.  Thank You Dimitri!!!

House in La Roque

This was the view from our upstairs bedroom.  It was amazing.  We could not have had better weather the whole time we were in this area.  Incredible.    One night Lorenzo cooked for us.  It was fun.  Jody made her favorite salad and dressing and we all pitched in to help.  The kitchen in this place was just great.

Went out exploring one day on the road that winds along up behind "our house".  Loved the ancient stone work.  Every where you look the masonery was outstanding.  (and still standing!)                   

 the patio "pre-dinner" 

The Dordogne River Southwest France

 This  is one of the most beautiful areas we love in France.  We have been to this region many times over the years.  This river flows slowly and peacefully through farm lands and over many eons has created this valley.  In the background you can see the lighter colored cliffs.    Our town was called La Roque Gageac.  It is on the right hand side set of cliffs in tthe background of this picture.  I took this shot one day after a great lunch overlooking the river  from a town called Domme.  It does not get much prettier than this.  We stayed in this valley for a week.

The town we stayed lies riverside as you can see.  In the afternoons the balloons (montgolfiers- if I spelled that right) would float right by our house.  They almost touched down into the river and then would lift off again and float right back up and drift away with the breeze.  It was great advertising for them.  We looked into hiring a ride, but it cost $500.00 per couple.  We could not quite swing that.  But it was fun to watch them up so close.  Many times we could hear their blowers from our outside patio before we could see them.    The castle in the background that looks white in color, back in the day was the kings castle.  He lived close to his town but not (in) his town.  It was only about 1000 ft from the last house in the row.  It was good to be King!  On this stretch of river, you can take a tour boat ride (1 hour) and hear the history of this area.  Its incredible and hard to believe.  There are 5 castles within about 5 miles  of each other.  At different times they were owned and controlled by different countries, and whoever survived the take-overs were forced to abide by the new King's ( or ruler's) rules, and their current religion and have to speak their new ruler's language or else you were out, done, dead.  No other options.    And these castles can see each other from one hillside to the next and warred and spied on each other constantly.  In fact they built  "Castlenaud" only about 1/2 mile from Castle "Beynac" on the hilltop literally to spy on them so they could not be surprised by their actions and attacks from across the valley.   It is mind boggling that two families in castles could fight so hard and for so long ( The Hundred Years War was a biggie) and actually fight to the death with people who were really your neighbors.  It was really interesting to hear all this.  Remember the book (and then movie) "Timeline," it was filmed in the Castles Beynac and Castlenaud.  They did not make that stuff up.  Its HERE.

   The house with the red shutters in the middle is the house we rented.  Lorenzo found this place on VRBO.com and it was a fantastic find.  It had 2 bdrms upstairs and 1 bdrm downstairs, with fully stocked kitchen, large living room and fireplace on ground floor.  Also, there was a really nice outter deck/patio we spent a LOT of time on in the afternoons when we were done exploring the nearby towns, lunch spots, and wine caves.  We loved staying in this place.  It was busy with tourists in the day time, but in the mornings and evenings it was quiet.  We were the only thing happpening here.  It was great!

           This was our patio deck on the right.  There were grape vines covering it creating nice shade from the sun in afternoons.  We would be sitting there enjoying ourselves laughing and giggling about whatever we may have been talking about at the time, and people who would be hiking UPHILL  passed us would then realize we were there, until then unnoticed, hidden in the shade relaxing and loving life.  The looks on their faces would drive home our thoughts... "Oh what a great place to be in the world.!