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In May and June I spent two wonderful months I traveled through Italy, from Cinque Terre in the north to Sorrento in the south. (Read about the wonders of Italy in my Italy Travelogue) Rome (on a separate page) Welcome to Cinque Terre.
Vernazza is the middle village. →
← Riomaggiore, with its old buildings seeming to lean on each other as the town tumbles along the river valley to the sea, is the furthest east of the villages.
The photo on the right shows the front door of this unique little hotel. And if you look closely at the front door, you can see one of the famous guests who stayed there.
I intended to head to the south of Italy for a relaxing week on the beach in Sorrento at the Hotel Del Mare (the photo and watercolor show the view from my room, with Mt. Vesuvius dominating the background). I did not relax much, with a couple days of vigorous hiking to the hill towns on the Amalfi coast and a long day wandering the awesome ruins of Pompeii, buried under 30 feet of volcanic ash and mud in 79AD and not uncovered again until the 18th Century. I was amazed at the magnitude of a city of over 20,000 people with 130 bars, restaurants and hotels (it was a booming seaport town) and at least 30 brothels (it was a booming seaport town), buried when Mt. Vesuvius blew its top.
From one of the terraces of my flat in the Centro Storico (old city center) of Firenze (Florence) at Via del Corso, 16 (3rd floor) near the Piazza della Repubblica, I had a view of Brunelleschi's 14th century Duomo and Il Campanile di Giotto (bell tower) only two blocks away. Nice place for coffee in the morning. And wine in the afternoon. And wine in the evening. Most of the city still looks much the same as it did during the Renaissance, when Michelangelo, Leonardo, Galileo, Botticelli and Machiavelli wandered the streets. Except now many of the homes have indoor plumbing. Nearby, the delightful hilltop towns of San Gimignano and Sienna retain their medieval splendor, complete with towering towers, fortified walls and delicious wine.
I stayed at a very elegant 15th century flat at 3009 Calle Nani with windows facing one of the smaller canals near the Ponte Accademia. It was furnished with antiques (or maybe just a bunch of old furniture) and the central location allowed me to explore the city easily. But only on foot or on the water because there are no "streets" in all of Venice: no cars, trucks, scooters or even bicycles!!
June 22 to June 30 - Lake Como the Italian Alps
I spent nine enchanting days at the wonderful old lakeside resort of Albergo Olivedo, run with charming enthusiasm by Laura, whose family has operated the hotel since the 1890s. Located in the sleepy little town of Varrena, at the widest part of Lake Como where the two "legs" join, I was able to savor the tranquility of the lake. Right across the lake was Bellagio for tourist action for the Cartier-Gucci crowd but Varenna, with a population of less than 800, offered peace and quiet. The Alps dominated the entire lake (the Swiss border is only a couple miles away), with peaks of 8,000 to over 10,000 feet reaching up to the sky with jagged snow covered peaks. The hiking presented me with spectacular views but it always seemed that I was hiking uphill!!
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