Sunday 5/20 @ 5pm
Tom and Terry arrive in Milwaukee for a week with Graham. They have been anxiously awaiting a whole week with Mr. G. We head out to Pizza Man on the East Side for a slice of Milwaukee before we head out for what is sure to be a slice-laden journey through Italy.
Monday 5/21 @ 5pm
Depart on our three-legged journey to Florence. Milwaukee to Detroit to Amsterdam to Florence. Normally we would avoid three connecting flights, but…we live in Milwaukee, want to use miles and want to go first class, so our choices are limited. A long journey it is!
While in Amsterdam at the KLM lounge, despite being particularly groggy, I notice out of the corner of my eye that many flights are delayed and cancelled. Many as in, about 1/3 of all of them. I chock it up to weather as it’s pretty gloomy outside. We pour a glass or two of champagne and await our flight to Florence.
5/22 @ 3pm
The Amsterdam airport is an error in engineering. The walk between our arriving flight and departing flight was 30 minutes. It made O’Hare look like a true joy to fly. It’s hot and crowded, but at least the luggage carts are free. We get to our gate and they call boarding and everyone pushes through the doors and onto a hot crowded bus. The bus slogs through a maze of planes and luggage carts and waits next to a small jet for a good 30 minutes – at this point we’re about to pass out from the heat.
When we get seated, we are already past our departure time. The pilot comes on and tells us that French Air Traffic Control has gone on strike and we need to be re-routed through Germany. We’ll be waiting at least another hour to take-off and will need to take a longer route to get there. After nearly 22 hours, we are losing our patience. Colleen busts out her window and yells “For God’s sake, please turn on the air!” At least the Heineken’s were free on this flight departing from Holland.
Upon landing in Florence, we realized why it was so hard to get here. They have a very short runway and no taxi-ways. Once the plane had screeched to a halt at the end of the runway, we did a u-turn and went to the unloading area. No jet bridges here. No baggage carts. No need. However, they do have a very fancy bus that we load on to after deplaning – even though we can see the entrance right ahead of us. This fancy bus drives 150 maybe 200 yards to the terminal. The only imaginable purpose was to employ Italians.
How long was the wait for immigration? Customs? No wait, no immigration, no customs. Welcome one welcome all – no paperwork needed – we love Italy so far. There were, however, half a dozen Italian guards jaw-jacking about something as we all walked by in the lane marked “nothing to declare.” For as many times as we have been to Italy it explains why we have no Italian passport stamps.
5/22 @ 7pm
After a 20 minute taxi ride in some chaotic traffic, we arrived at our hotel in Florence – which is just a one-night launching pad to the rest of Tuscany. Check out the colors out our window:
Because we are so late, we ask the concierge if he can move our dinner reservation by 15-30 minutes. He laughs and says “they are not that quick.” We think he meant “timely.” He calls nonetheless and guarantees our table for a late arrival. We head up to our beautiful spacious room, freshen up, and go to the roof-top bar to claim our welcome drink. We arrived right at the time of Appertivo which is from 6-8 pm and consists of heavy appetizers and Aperol spritzers. It’s an Italian thing and it appears as if all of Florence is here. Upon hearing that we just want a beverage our waiter is disappointed. Then the Italian organization skills kick-in as we wait 25 minutes for our beverage, and after some confusion and another 25 minutes go by, we are allowed to leave without paying. The view was amazing, but a cold front has come through, and it looks like rain. We are trying to enjoy our first few minutes in Italy but are having a hard time…
Dinner was at this place that is supposed to have some of the best and most traditional T-Bone’s in Florence, Tuscan style, which is rosemary, olive oil, garlic and salt. Most tables had them at our restaurant. They appeared to be 2 inches thick. Stress is fading fast and we order a carafe of the house red wine. Out of the corner of our eye we see our server filling the carafe from a spigot that is coming from a large box. Yep, boxed wine. Well – it was a delicious Chanti and we ordered an extra carafe near the end of our meal to make sure we had all the tasting notes.
Do you remember the café menu in the movie My Cousin Vinny? Well, it read Breakfast….$1.99 Lunch $2.29….Dinner $2.49…. This place was similar except they had a smidge more description. The “package” we chose was for 2 persons and was $80 Euro. It included water, wine, a steak which the server described as “Strong,” potatoes and some grilled veggies. It came on a wooden cutting board that was a good 20×36 inches in size.
The steak was not truly “strong” rather it was “huge” Check out this picture:
And another one for good measure:
After finishing as much as we could, we strolled back to our hotel to finally get some decent sleep with a full belly of “Italian” food. (They just call it food)
5/23 Florence to Pisa to Monterosso al Mare via car (day of our 15th Anniversary!)
We woke up later than expected at 9am. Still a bit jet-lagged but recovering nicely. The breakfast buffet at our hotel was 50 Euros. But coffee was free. We took the free coffee and set out, luggage in tow, to find our car rental place. We were approaching an area where the sidewalk was so jammed we had to walk in the street. Then I realized that was the car rental place. No fewer than 40 people waiting on the sidewalk plus an additional 25 or so inside. We took a number…
I stayed with the luggage and Colleen went to get some breakfast and cappuccino. After nearly 2 hours of standing in the street we were called. Yeah! But the system was down and renting cars was next to impossible. The agent offered me an Audi A1 as it was “similar” to the A3 I had reserved. I’m no idiot, as an Audi A1 is similar to a Fiat Panda. I suggested that perhaps an A4 or A5 would be just as “similar” and she magically found an A3, we just had to wait 25 minutes for it to be cleaned.
Unfortunately the “system” was so far down she couldn’t finish my transaction. She wrote down the following on a map of Florence and told me to go to the garage and get my keys: “A3, Out, FG55667W, RA34335568” We got the car, no rental agreement in hand, and took off toward Pisa. Colleen has now nearly lost all patience, as we have likely missed our lunch in Pisa and are dangerously close to missing the time we have bought tickets to climb the tour.
Great news! The sun was shining, it was warm, and I opened my window to get some air. Minutes later, after nearly being overwhelmed by diesel fumes and a passing motorbike nearly ripped my arm off and I rolled up the window and turned on the AC. Colleen was navigating and having a hard time with the maps app, but she did well. Traffic was insane. Drivers were insane. It took 20-30 minutes to get to the Autostrade and I finally was able to open up the 1.6L diesel to its full potential.
Pisa had several exits from the highway. Colleen was reading about Pisa and glanced up, saw an exit for Pisa and screamed “exit here! Pisa!” Being the obedient husband I am, I veered right and came to the bottom of the ramp. Colleen says, “oh. Can you get back on?” I replied that I could not and we began navigating the side streets of Pisa to get to the tower.
The center of Pisa is within a wall that surrounds the city center. Navigating to the tower via Google Maps takes us to areas that are not drive-able and not allowed unless you have a special pass called a ZTL. If you enter a ZTL without a permit they take a picture of your license plate and fine you 100 Euros. I wasn’t interested in that so we needed to re-route, re-route, and re-route again. Our nerves were becoming quite frayed and we finally found the free parking lot for the Tower just outside the city wall. Unfortunately as we pulled up, we learned that it was closed on Wednesdays. We drove around the area and found a spot to park, which promised a free tow to the impound lot if you didn’t feed the meter. With literally no meters in sight we locked the car and headed toward the tower. We were past our reservation time and our travel book promised they would turn us away if we were late.
We wandered around for 30 minutes trying to find the check-in place. You can’t take bags of any kind, even purses, up the tower for reasons we will learn shortly. We wait in line and when we get to the front were hoping for some Italian lee-way. After some back and forth with the other four people taking tickets for a line of maybe 40 people, we are allowed in. Up 250 circular stairs in a very narrow corridor that would barely allow for two people to pass, we made it to the top. We were dizzy and out of breath, but the view was breathtaking:
Very hungry, we looked around -briefly- and headed back down.
Now, it was nearly 3pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch. We set off to find the place we were supposed to go to at Noon. We arrived to find this:
Crap. Closed on Wednesday. And, of course, it was supposed to be one of the best places for a light lunch in all of Pisa. We pulled up TripAdvisor to find a great place that was not a tourist trap as these were abundant and obvious with the host hocking the menu to passers-by. Everything highly rated was closing in 2 minutes. WTF! So, we went to a tourist trap. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, except for the small cup of marinara I asked for dipping my calamari in came out as a Pizza with Marinara.
Bellies full we set off for our hotel in Montessori al Mare on the coast, in one of the five coastal towns of Cinque Terre. It should have been about an hour and 15 minutes by car. However, Google maps said that driving directions were not available. However, thankfully walking directions were. We set off in our car as if we were huffing it on foot. After 30 minutes slogging down a crowded two-lane road with endless turnabouts and bumper to bumper traffic, we decided to self-direct to the tollway and try to read the map manually like we did on our trip in 2013. The tollway was bumper to bumper. Construction had closed one of only two lanes and we found ourselves amidst some amazing scenery and angry Italians. A truck driver tried to drive us into the guard rail. The elderly couple behind us was having a very spirited discussion about (I can only imagine) the need to exit the tollway and take the side roads. Yelling, hand gestures back and forth, the like.
Once the construction was done I floored it. I read a sign that said the left lane was for passing only. While I was gaining speed faster than those in the right lane, I couldn’t keep up with those behind me in 4 cyl. Engines…
Finally, we were getting close. We were supposed to be about 15 minutes away, it was about 5 pm and we were already dreaming of drinking Aperol spritzes on the hotel deck.
Colleen knew the exit we needed to take by the road number. Only problem was that these exit signs didn’t have road numbers and the name of our town wasn’t listed. Well, WTF. Not to mention we were zipping along at 140km and going any slower would have put us in grave danger, so we didn’t have time for thinking. So, we missed our exit and only knew when we then went through a series of long tunnels and got to the next exit, which was at least 10 more miles down the road, and HAD road numbers on it.
We paid our toll of 11.40 Euros with a 20 and got back in change, probably 50 coins. There was no re-entry to the tollway here and the interchanges were far from logical, so we were forced to try to take the side streets back to Montessoro al Mare. Based upon the maps we were looking at it was possible, but the roads were not secondary. The tollway was green, secondary roads were yellow and the next level down were gray. We were looking at mostly gray roads until we could reach the yellow secondary roads.
The scenery was absolutely beautiful but I couldn’t enjoy it. We were on a 1.5 lane paved road nestled into the cliffs with turnabouts and steep grades. Every five minutes we came upon a small town with a few buildings. The next turn off took us to a 1 lane paved road balancing on the cliffs with no guard rails, turnabouts and steep grades. The GPS was a bit behind as there were so many twist and turns – about 50% of the time Colleen wasn’t sure if we were headed the right way. No more towns, but there was the occasional residence. Only 11.5 (of the original 12) miles to go. We were averaging 7-8 miles an hour due to the terrain. On one particular switch back and hill, I had to floor the car and we were still only going 5 mph, it was beginning to be scary.
On the next turn off, this one lane paved road lead us to a 1 lane unpaved road, that was still at least graded. Then the grading stopped and the ruts and puddles became more common. Jagged rocks too. The average speed dropped yet again, fearing a flat tire in GOD KNOWS WHERE WE ARE.
On the next turn off the one lane unpaved road became more of a logging road with two tire tracks and tall grass in the center. Based upon GPS the next turn off was the final one before this connected us to a paved secondary road which would take us to our town. We were near the top of the cliff. Well, the next turn off was impassable by car. We couldn’t go any further and would need to turn back and find another way.
Colleen broke down and said she was scared and didn’t know what to do. It was getting late, and we were starting to worry we were going to be stuck out in the woods all night. About 7pm and the sun was starting to get low in the sky. I had to pee something fierce. We hadn’t seen a car in 30 minutes so I felt comfortable peeing on the side of the “road.” Guess what, a car appeared just as I was zipping down. Colleen jumped into the drivers seat and said I’m driving, you navigate.
It was refreshing to finally have the roads get better as opposed to worse as we back tracked. Cars and towns becoming more frequent. A few turns later we were back on the secondary road, which was the 1.5 lane road as you may recall. Colleen, aka, Mario, became empowered to drive like an Italian – when in Italy. Roundabout? Go for it, no matter the traffic coming. Tight corner? Speed up. A few close calls later, and full on locked brakes, she calmed the fuck down and I could once again breathe.
Long story long, we made it. It was now about 8pm and our dinner reservation was at 8pm. We parked at a garage at the edge of town due to another ZTL and walked with our luggage to our hotel on the water.
Monterosso al Mare is an entirely walking town that is extremely charming. Italian grandmas chatted on benches while kids played in the plaza. Our hotel, Hotel Pasquale, was at the end of town, built into the side of the cliff overlooking a gorgeous beach and marina:
Our room was truly European! Figure 3 feet on each side of the bed, a small terrace, and a bathroom that would make Manhattan bathrooms feel like the big kids on the block. Its diminutive size was a bit of a shock after the palatial room we had in Florence, but the view was gorgeous and breakfast was included.
Dinner was at the Michelin Star L’Ancora della Tortuga. Wow, Colleen picked well. Carved into the side of the cliff, overlooking splashing waves, with an amazing locally inspired menu. Here is a picture of us at our table:
We ordered the highly recommended tasting menu and paired it with a bottle of Italian sparkling rose. Of the 5 courses, three featured cod. It was cod in a fitter, cod in a bowl, cod on a plate, cod in a dessert…ok, all but the dessert. We figured either they were giving away a free cod with every mattress purchase in town – or – it was local.
Colleen joked at dinner that God gave us this frustrating day to test if we can make it for the next 15 years. Mission accomplished – we made it and were ready to relax in Cinque Terre and really start enjoying “la dolce vita”.