Sunday June 26 – Day 2 in Lavagna – which for those of you phonetically inclined – rhymes with lasagna. It was a lazy day today – AMT and S got some extra sleep to counter jet lag, we sketched out what we wanted to do for the week and just enjoyed the surroundings. It was another hot day around 30 with clear blue sky. AMT and T went for a walk to explore the neighborhood. Along the way AMT pointed out all the flowers and shrubs that she has at her place in Phoenix. There are some wonderful views of the valley below us.
In the afternoon we decide to check out the beach area of Chiavari, the town right next to us. With the rental of this apartment, we have access to one of those private beach clubs we’ve talked about, complete with umbrella and chairs to lounge in. This beach club was quite the set up. Once we found it (because there are 4 side by side), we checked into reception. Here we were led to our reserved umbrella. It had “sidewalks” set out so that you didn’t have to walk on the hot sand, water misters and places to wash off the sand and salt after being in the water, change cabanas and a refreshment area. Also, it had a pool with waterslides and lifeguards at both sea and pool, playground stuff, and beach volleyball court.
We spent a few hours there, J had a great time as usual.
Once we returned to the apartment, dinner was made and we enjoyed the evening breeze on the deck under a gazebo. The sunset was beautiful
and later we were even treated to a fireworks display as it was the close of the feast of St. John the Baptist. Later, T, J and M watched Castaway – until past midnight. J was pretty tired but stuck it out and finished the movie. T and M had forgotten how long this movie was!
Monday, June 27 – We decided that we should head to Pisa to see the famous Leaning Tower. It took about 1.5 hours to get there – we find a parking spot close to its location and onward we go. We enter the wall-enclosed village via the arched portico, walk about 50 feet, turned the corner and there it was in all its glory. M was leading our group, rounded the corner and called out ”found it!”
It is another hot, beautiful clear blue-sky day. What a beautiful sight – the white marble monuments surrounded by expanses of green– majestic. The tower, built in 1173, is actually the bell tower belonging to the cathedral.
The religious monuments are located on the Piazza dei Miracoli (Miracle Square). The place is extremely busy with tourists just like us. It is quite an expansive area making it seem not quite as crowded. We needed to buy tickets to enter any of the monuments. We didn’t go up the tower as the available time slot to go up was 5 hours away and we weren’t waiting around for that.
The Cathedral and Baptistery were beautifully adorned and a treat to walk through. The intricate work of the marble made us wonder – how much time it took to carve just a pillar or arch, let alone the entire facades. The workmanship is breathtaking.
While in one of the museums we were able to see a visual presentation of the restoration of the tower. The film said the tower suffered from a “mysterious disease” which plagued the tower for about 800 years until the late 1990’s when it was finally adequately strengthened to prevent the collapse of this famous landmark. The tower was apparently built upon marine sedimentary soil. It was very informative and had us check out some of the things that they added to strengthen the tower.
Everyone enjoyed seeing the site that held more than just the tower. One of the buildings in the cathedral square of Pisa was an enclosed cemetery that has many late academia including the mathematician Fibonacci. It was a great road trip and we checked off another place off of our “gotta see while we are in Italy” list.
June 28, Tuesday- It’s train trip day for the girls to Florence, a 2.5-hour train journey from Chiavari, the town next to Lavagna. The boys are staying behind for a boy’s day (knowing that we will be going to Florence again when we are in Tuscany in September) while the girls go explore. AMT and S would like to go to the see the main museum in Florence, which houses collections of masterpieces from artists long ago. We arrive in Florence and find our way out of the station to across the street where there is an information centre. We get ourselves a map armed with some useful information and we’re off to explore Florence by foot. The first street taken led us past one of Florence’s “Rodeo Drive Streets”, where on either side of the street designer stores occupy the street level of former day piazzas (big palacial homes). We did stop and gaze into a few shoe stores – even taking a picture of gold sequined shoes at a cool 3300 Euro (approx 5000 Can.) can’t get our heads around spending that amount for a pair of shoes. The streets are fairly narrow, parking is at a premium and certain parts of the old city are off limits to cars. The buildings are quite ornate, but quite monochromatic, mostly along the brown tones. Pastels are not evident down in this area.
We decided to venture to the furthest place we wanted to visit first and then make our way back toward the station.
First stop, the Forte Belvedere overlooking the city. We had to huff it quite a ways up hill to reach this venue. We arrived at the top and encountered an American tourist who directed them to the entrance. When they arrived at the entrance, we found that the place was closed to the public and wouldn’t be open til fall. The girls were not impressed that the tourist didn’t tell us – they grumbled a bit, “why didn’t he tell us….” and decided that they didn’t want to pay any money to walk around gardens. So, we turned about and headed for their next target – the Uffizi Gallery – that is reported to have incredible works of art from the masters. We retraced their steps and crossed the river and found their destination.
As we rounded the corner, we were aghast at the number of people who were standing in line awaiting entrance… oh this wasn’t looking good, 0 for 2 so far…. After contemplation and consultation, we decided to see if tickets could be purchased for Thursday, as AMT and S were willing to return to Florence another day if everything could not been seen in the one day. After checking with a couple of places/people, they found that indeed the girls could get tickets for Thursday. With Thursday tickets in hand to enter between 11 and 11:15, we were off to explore one of “the sights to see in Florence”. We thought about going into the main cathedral, but again, the line up to get inside was very long, so we opted for the Basilica di Santa Croce. The church is very ornate and filled with memorials and tombs of some famous Italians such as Dante, Michaelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo Galilei (we didn’t know he went by two names) as well as a bunch of other wealthy Florentines were buried – it would seem that it was the church to be have your remains placed.
Although, according to the audioguide, Michaelangelo had a desire to be buried in Rome, but others chose to ignore his request. In this church as with others we have come across, there are tombstones within the floor, according to the info provided, the Franciscans felt that this was appropriate as we are returned to earth and so it was fine that the markers would be walked upon. All three of us enjoyed touring the beautiful church with its works by artists such as Donatello and Boticelli. Not only is it a house of worship, but it’s a collection of some incredible art. The girls wandered around through the street markets and tried to find some bits of shade to cool us from the “stinking hot” sun (as AMT put it). The day was enjoyable, but we had had it by 4:30 and headed back to the train station. So we boarded our train early which in hind sight was a good thing as nearing to departure time, the train filled to standing room only – we were pleased to have comfy seats with some air conditioning.
As for the boys, M and J start the day with a super breakfast, sausage and eggs for M and sausage and grilled cheese for J. Then it’s off to do our errands. We are on a quest to see if we can find a Macbook Air, so we can send our old Macbook home and drop about 5 lbs of weight. We are successful right away, and find a few other items we need to boot. Then we are off to the grocery store to buy our dinner for tonight, as J says it will be fun to cook together. Again we are successful, finding filets of orata (a local white fish we have both had in restaurants), some cheese filled ravioli, and a fresh buffalo mozzarella. Back at the apartment we decide to watch Forest Gump, a movie where J noticed that Forest seemed to do a lot of things in his life: like become a football hero, a war hero, shake hands with two presidents, go to China to represent the US, become rich with his shrimp boat company, run across the US 4 times non-stop, etc (J wondered out-loud if all that was true)? Next we grab a small lunch and then head to the beach for a couple of hours of playing in the waves. We jointly make a super dinner, and get cleaned up in time to pick up the girls at the train station. Once back at the apartment, we are share about our day on the patio, while the adults savor a nice French Bordeaux.
June 29 – Wednesday While T was working on the blog, M comments on how the weather is going to cool-off next week – going from 31 down to 28 … we all had a chuckle at that comment as our friends in Calgary have been suffering from a real lousy spring and are hoping for this kind of weather for more than a 3 day stint.
M, T, and AMT decided to walk down to Chiavari, larger and across the river from Lavagna. The 45 minute walk took us down the windy hill, along the tree-lined riverside walk seeing loads of fish (no idea what kind or whether people can fish here) and into town. There are about 28000 people who live in this seaside town with numerous beautiful buildings, fashioned after Genovese palaces of early years. They are about 4-5 stories high, with ornate wrought-iron balconies and and beautiful facades. We are pleased with the layout and variety of places to see and locate a place to have a cappuccino and chat. We locate a kitchen shop in which we each purchase glass lemon squeezers (AMT expounded on its numerous attributes so T thought she should buy one too as the glass ones are not available at home). With fresh bread in hand, we head back to the apartment. By the time we arrive home, we are all overheated and ready for a beer!
It’s another hot day with plenty of humidity. AMT, T and S decide to walk back down to the town in search of new sandals for Sydney. M has agreed to pick them up by the train station at 6, so the girls are on a mission with a deadline. No shortage of shoe stores in this town – it leaves no doubt in T’s mind that there is a love for shoes and handbags by the Italian woman! Can’t blame them, there are some beautiful choices here. The girls found a pair at the last store they looked in and had 15 minutes to spare – its time to get to the train station. Meanwhile M and J enjoyed watching the first Fantastic Four movie, and just hang out. After another meal enjoyed on the patio, AMT and S prepared for their trip back to Florence and the others just kicked back.
June 30 – Thursday While AMT and S went back to Florence to go to the Uffizi Gallery, M, T, and J kicked back and enjoyed a leisure morning around the apartment. Our landlord here has lent us a printer plus we have Internet access, so we use these fully and get printouts for all the places we have booked from now through then end of September, these will be very helpful. Again it’s another hot day, so we went down to the Lido beach club in the afternoon. T went off in search of a hair salon, while the boys went to play in the waves. The waves are very big today; there are even some surfers out – which surprised us. The beach had lifeguards who were on high alert due to the wave action. It wasn’t breezy at the beach, but the water relayed a different story. M found that after about 30 min. he had had enough of getting pounded, even though J had taken the time to explain various techniques for dealing with the different types of waves. Once T returned with a thinner and shorter hairdo, she took over keeping an eye on J as he played in the waves.
A great couple of hours at the beach, we returned home for dinner and then pick up the girls from the train station. They had a good time in Florence, told us all about the museum, but were tired from their outing, so they packed up for their flight to London tomorrow and called it a night. We enjoyed the patio again before heading off to bed.
July 1 – Friday Happy Canada Day everyone! We are up early and preparing for departure. AMT and S are leaving today – we will be taking them to the airport in Genoa for their London departure. Piercarlo who owns this place told us on Wednesday that there is a big market in town today, so we are going to go have a look before we take the girls to the airport. Everyone does some cleaning up and then we pack the girls stuff into the car and we head downtown.
We wander through some of the streets in search of something to eat for J and S. Once this is accomplished, it’s market time. T sees a narrow roadway with some tables set up. This leads to other roadways which branch off form the first one found into several series of tables filled with AMT’s quote “Italy’s version of a dollar/cheap clothing store”. J was not impressed “it’s 96% ladies and the other is for men and kids!” M says “get used to it, that’s the way it is”. J is still not impressed. There must have easily been over 70 tables, and we were sure we did not see the whole market. We wanted to check out the Cathedral in the town, a few blocks from where we are. We had stopped in the other day and AMT and T wanted to have a closer look. With proper attire, we enter the church and gaze around in amazement. This is the most ornate church we have seen!
The incredible intricate marble statutes, pillars and altars is astounding. The ceilings are gorgeous. T and J say, we have to bring back dad (who had left us to retrieve the vehicle) to see this place, he’ll really appreciate it.
We left Chiavari with plenty of time and an easy drive to Genoa. We say our goodbyes to the girls and thank them for coming to visit, we head back to find a place in Chiavari for lunch. Next we get ready for the beach and head to the Lido club. M decides he will just enjoy the shade under the umbrella and have a nap, so J and T head to the water and T even decides to go in and play in the waves today. As usual J can outlast either of his parents and stays in the water for his typical 2 hours (and that is as usual ended when his parents remind him its time to come in). We get back to the apartment and T makes one of the meals we have really come to enjoy, pancetta cream sauce pasta – yummy! We get on Skype and call Calgary to talk with Sue, Julliette, and Mathieu (who will be joining us in 2 weeks), and then call Granma. It’s a great way to end the day.
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