Monday
morning and quick pack for the short hop to La Spezia and hit the road after my
last breakfast at this lovely property. Bye bye Cinque Terra. I really enjoyed
my relax here and the lack of feeling guilty that I got not overloading with
tourist activities. Each of the towns had its own charm but Monterosso and
Manarola were probably my favourite places.
I'd rate this as a good pick for a holiday and four full days was
probably enough for a relaxing time but realistically without hiking, two days
was possible.
Ninety
kilometer hop to La Spezia which I was told was nothing special but in fact, although
being a port city, was very attractive indeed. Old town with shops and cafes
and a certain type of Italian charm. What wasn't charming however was the road
closures, inaccurate GPS information trying to turn me up one way streets the
wrong way and other such antics.
Anyway
I FINALLY found my accommodation and learned a lovely new Italian word -
Affiticamere! This is a B&B room of any type or style which in this case
was an ensuite bedroom within somebody's apartment. I was seriously upset to
the point that the owner wrote me an email complaining of my behavior, right in
some sense but not in others, he asked why I didn't put the word into Google
translate and I would have known and then told me he had told bookings.com more
than a hundred times to do something about it and they hadn't. Given that he
wrote the description of the property he certainly could have made it clearer.
Anyway why would I put a US website into Google translate, I simply thought it
was part of the name – DUH! Anyway was able to cancel without cost and rent a
four star shoebox sorry hotel room for the two night stay.
More
GPS battles but I eventually find it and go for a walk around town and buy what
I thought was a takeaway lasagne which turned out to be a pommodoro lasagne
with tomato and no meat but tasty all the same. Michael and Vivien (bro and
sis-in-law) come to the hotel and we go for a walk around town. Deciding to
have a drink before dinner we stop at a street wine bar and order three soft
drinks and a glass of wine. They proceed to bring some olives, sweet roasted onions,
sun-dried tomatoes, bruschetta pesto and we are thinking we were about to be
poorer tourists - nope very reasonable $A20 best value this trip so far. Walk
to the restaurant originally opting for an outside table but realising how hot
it was head inside. Not in any way
expensively fitted out the ambience was amazing with my view possibly aided by
their playing Ray Charles in the background, one wall was worthy of note - an
amazing 2 x 2 metre canvas with four photos of the owners two kids and
something like our best dish so in Italian. The Neal was excellent - a mushroom
truffle gnocchi and an amazing foie gras with fresh sour cherries and a glass
of dessert wine, which despite having may fair share of foie gras and never
having received a dessert wine – apparently quite normal. Who would be thought
that heaven resides in Italy. We were all amazed when the bill for three
entrees, three main and three desserts with one glass of wine and mineral water
came to $A60 a head.
Off
to bed rather lateish but the arrangement is that I will pick up Michael and
Vivien at 10:00 the next morning. Breakfast was a good example of an Italian
breakfast and I arrive in time as we head off to Lucca, a town an hour away
from La Spezia that my Italian bridge friends have told me is quite beautiful.
They weren't wrong, a lovely town verging on village with a great old part of
town filled with interesting shops, cafes, offer shops and many other traders.
We spend about two hours total, walking around and settle for a cafe style
lunch, you know the type salad, lasagne and rock melon with Parma (of course)
ham.
Some
more walking around before heading back to La Spezia around 16:00. I drop
M&V at their hotel and go to a large shipping mall and supermarket to get a
few things. I picked up M&V at 19:30 and we are for Porto Venere which was
on their hit list. Only 17km away it took some time to get there along the
windy coastal road. After doing two laps of the road down the hill towards and
up the hill out of the seaside marina town we finally snag a car space - even
the carpark was full. We spent some time inspecting restaurants, their menus
and ratings etc., before deciding on the hotel restaurant in the Grand Hotel.
Now you need to know that hotel restaurants are normally off limits but the
beautiful terrace setting overlooking the town forced us to make an exception
and what a good call that was. The food, the service, the ambience and
everything was just so right.
Let
me digress for a moment. One thing I do when I travel is catch up with
podcasts. During the drive from Lucca I listen to Alex Baldwin and Here's the
Thing and an interview with a doctor Lustig. The theme was how much bad food we out
into our bodies especially sugar. Anyway I was so profoundly moved by this I
then and there went on a sugar detox which is going ok after 30 hours. I'll pepper
the blog with my progress on this one. So finishing up the meal of mussels
(best ones EVER and a rather unusual combination but incredibly tasty a seafood
and fennel gnocchi, and of course no dessert.
I
don't get back to the hotel and bed before 00:30 with all of the traffic, parking and other
trevails.
Next
morning I have a "work" conference call finally hitting the road at
10:00 heading to Salsomaggiore where the bridge tournament is being held. I
must say I was extremely impressed with the beautiful town. In its day it was a
spa town and as such the buildings and architecture is beautiful but the green
fields and farmlands driving in were amazingly beautiful. Anyway at this early
stage I feel quite happy to be spending the next 11 days here.
I
arrive at the hotel which is shoebox rooms but say size 14 as there is at least
a king size bed in the room rather than the king single in my last one, but I
am being a little unfair it is a nice room and well appointed. With youth
bridge all the meals are included. Let me digress again - a few years ago in
China we were served KFC for 10 days straight and to make it infinitely worse
that's what I decided to eat on the first day I arrived as I hadn't had it for some
years before. Anyway the lunch was an amazing buffet of salads, antipasta,
lasagne and heaps of other food delights. Now that the food situation matches
the city situation I am REALLY HAPPY TO
BE HERE. Youth tournaments are always a bit of crap shoot and it is with some
intrepidation that one arrives at them.
I
walk up the playing area in the Congress Hall which is a slightly outdated by
nonetheless a beautiful old building about 300 metres from the hotel. Some
areas are not air conditioned but overall the players and officials will be
quite happy with this venue.
I
nurse a cappuccino while catching up on my blog and at 19:00 attend the opening
ceremony. An excellent one if judged by the short and concise speeches. There
are 800 participants here in four divisions Under 25 (22 ) Under 20 (18 ) Kids
Under 15 (14 ) and girls Under 25 (14). I notice a LOT of well-armed police presence
which seemed unusual until it twigged that there were two Israeli teams and it
was especially in place for them.
Back
to the hotel for a great meal and an early night – no dessert and no sugar.
So Thursday and the tournament begins. I breakfast and
arrive at the venue very early for the 10:00 start. The VuGraph theatre is
great, the theatre where the opening ceremony was held. Although seating large
numbers it looked quite well populated with around 150 viewers, which is much
better than commentating for a handful of less than interested souls – which has
happened in the past. The reason for so many is that there are 68 teams mostly
comprising 6 people with only four playing at once. So those 136 not playing
plus 68 captains and officials make up the bulk of the audience.
Australia is represented by an U25 team and a girls team. At
the end of day one the Juniors are running 13th after some tough
opponents while the girls are running 7th after just 2 matches. A mediocre
but acceptable start.
Nothing else to report for now
Hope all are well
XD
No comments:
Post a Comment