Lazin' in Levanto

After our visit to Florence, we hopped on a train and headed over to the Ligurian Sea for a mini beach vacation. The train ride took us past the famous marble mountains in Carrara which were incredible to look out, even from a moving train window. Bill said his first impression, not knowing what those mountains were, was that they were snow-capped. Well, they might have been very white, but I think it is time for a new glasses prescription. When we came up onto the ocean with its rocky coastline, I think all 5 of us murmered “oooooh” at the same time, some of us louder than others. Technically, we were on the Riviera di Levante and stayed in Levanto about 5 km north of Cinque Terre Parco Nazionale. I planned too late (like the week before) to actually get a hotel room in the very popular Cinque Terre on the weekend of Italy’s national summer holiday, which is how we had the good luck to end up in Levanto. These places are all just south of the more famous Portofino and what I think is traditionally thought of as the Italian Riviera. That worked out great as because once again we were on a “road less traveled” by most visitors to Italy and included the ever present topless sunbathers. Interesting, most of the topless women are older, 30's & 40's in all shapes & sizes - the young babes keep a little bit of material on the top. Levanto is your basic beach town, reminded me a bit of Florida - lots of retirees, some hotels, 40 year old surfer dudes who came 20 years ago for college spring break and never left, souvenir stands and gelato stands. We stayed in a small hotel, Hotel Stella Maris, which I think had about 18 rooms. We had the “big” suite that was one room with a double bed, fold out couch with a metal contraption that actually made it a bunk bed and a roll-away. Since the top “bunk” of the bunk bed had no sides and was crammed into the middle of the room between the matrimonale bed and a dresser, Bill had to sleep up there with Isabelle down below and for just a split second I had a panic that he would come crashing down on her in the middle of the night – but a check of the metal holding up the top bed made us both believe that 2 or 3 people could have been on there and not brought it down. It was very cozy especially given that amount of furniture and decorative items in the room. The furnishings were very, very, very, very ornate (I can’t use the word garish because the people who ran it were just so darn nice.) as well as the frescos on the ceiling, pictures on the walls, lamps, various dressers, wardrobe, mirrors, curtains, bedding, etc etc. It was quite a contrast to the stark beauty of the rocky coast line and ocean. There was satellite TV in the room, but for some reason it was a German satellite service, so the kids were thrilled to see Nickelodeon for the first time this summer, albeit in German and is even more foreign to them than Italian, which they are reluctantly picking up. But honestly, Spongebob, Patrick and Gary (What? You don’t know who Gary and Patrick are? Go find a 6 year old.) are buckets of fun with or without the witty repartee. Right? And in case you are interested, did you know that in German Spongebob is Spongebob SquareHead versus the American Spongebob Square Pants and the Italians can’t be bothered with caring about either his head or his pants and he is known here as just Spongebob. (Oh my god, did you just read all the dialogue on Spongebob? I better get to work on my dissertation and quick.)

In the summer many of the places require that you stay “half-board” which means that you pay a higher price and in the price you pay for your room, breakfast & dinner. That was fine with us – we actually found a hotel room in a great place and the food was good enough, especially given that our fine dining options are limited with our traveling companions. The only problem was that dinner was at the sophisticated diner’s time of 8:30 and after a day at the beach, the ragazzi were STARVING! They chowed down the appetizer plate of all kinds of foods with textures and tastes they would normally shriek at (I loved it). Each morning at breakfast, the waiter took our dinner order from 3 or 4 items usually included some kind of pasta for first plate and second plate being fish, turkey, beef, salad, etc. One of the great things about Italy is that there is no such thing as a kids menu, so while there are kid friendly things like pasta, bread and broiled meats, the bad habit of serving children fried things ubiquitously coupled with french fries just doesn’t happen automatically and they are forced (by hunger if nothing else) to eat swordfish, clams and lots of other good things that for one reason or another I haven’t introduced to them as much as I should. (Probably just sheer laziness on my part.) Everyone staying at the hotel ate dinner together and the crowd was a mix of Italians, Germans, Dutch, an Australian couple, us as the lone Americans and a family from Toronto that had just moved to Geneva for the husband’s job.

The beach sand was actually very fine “gravel” and the last yard or 2 leading up to the water was very rocky – the kids were not bothered, it was just like the beach at the cottage on Lake Huron and so we are quite used to negotiating the rocks to get into the water. The first day the surf was very big and powerful, so the kids spent a couple of hours just running into the waves and being thrown back up onto the shore. We also got to see quite a few surfers practicing to various degrees of success. After the heat, crowds and museums of Florence, the ragazzi were happy, relaxed and having a great time which in turn makes the parents happy, relaxed and having a great time; a win-win as the cliché goes. The next day was rainy so we hopped on the train to visit Cinque Terre which none of the kids wanted to do after the fun of wave surfing the previous day and were only convinced because of the bad weather that there just wasn’t anything else to do and I believe we may have threatened them with a museum or church outing. Cinque Terre is a group of 5 hill towns literally built into the rocky hills on coast of the Ligurian. It is an internationally popular tourist/hiking destination and national park. (If you aren’t familiar with it, just google it and you will get more info than you could ever want about it.) There are a number of hikes along the coast and we took the easiest one which is supposed to take about 30 minutes but of course, took us over an hour because there were just too many rocky crevices to climb up, plants to look at, stones to examine, grape vines & olive trees to ogle and views to behold (the views are so spectacular even young children have to stop and be amazed!). We all love hiking and being outdoors so it was a great morning, the rain stopped and most of the clouds cleared. I had wonderful déjà vu from when I was introduced to Cinque Terre almost 10 years ago by Terri. We had lunch in a snotty restaurant, but it overlooked the ocean and had a view that compensated for the attitude. Then Bill spotted a playground and the kids had a great time playing on the monkey bars, swinging and doing all their other favorite playground things. It was just your basic playground like any small elementary school would have, but it had to have the most scenic view of any playground in the world. We had so much fun that day the kids did something they almost never do, they volunteered that they were glad that I “forced them” (I am so mean!) them on the hike. We only had one day at Cinque Terre and spent the last day at the beach, being beach bums, trying to catch little crabs, prying barnacles off the rocks, eating chips, pizza & gelato for lunch and enjoying the fact that even at the beach the espresso is hot, bitter, strong and served in cute little espresso glass cups. We got to watch a sailing regatta of small boats and asked about renting a small boat but unfortunately there were none available.

We headed for home on trains that we booked as “first class” and while we didn’t assume the stewardess type service we had on the fancy-schmantzy Eurostar, we (I) assumed a dining car of some sort. So while we had a 45 minute wait in the train station with mildly hungry children, I put them off with the idea that we would eat on the train. We had a 5 hour train ride back to Padova, so I thought it would be a good time-waster. Well, weren’t we surprised when there was no dining car, no food to be bought, we had 3 hungry kids and it was 1 pm – yikes! I think I had a stick of gum, a couple of cough drops in the bottom of my purse and a half bottle of water in the beach bag. (Bill wanted to feed the kids lunch at the train station but I talked him out of it and thank god, he was sweet and/or smart enough to not bring it up.) We were seated in one of the train compartments with an Italian woman who had just returned from a vacation in California. She told us all about how much fun she had at Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. The kids were very excited to show off and talk to someone in English but after about an hour proceeded to melt down with hunger and complain loudly and often “ho fame” (I’m hungry! I’m hungry). She pulled a small package of whole grain cracker/cookies out of her purse and offered one, but having little social skills and being famished, they embarrassingly gobbled down the whole package in about 5 minutes. I can’t imagine what she must have thought of us, but I’m hoping she got a good story out of it for her friends – a mamma with no food for her bambini. I’m lucky the Italian social services people haven’t shown up. We apologized profusely, she was very good natured about the whole thing and while it would have been too awkward to offer renumeration for a half eaten box of crackers, I did think of it for a minute. We arrived in Milan with only 15 minutes to change trains, so there was really no time to eat, but I managed to buy a couple bottles of pop and some chips from an overpriced vendor at the track. Luckily, there was a snack cart on the next train on we filled up on cookies and more pop to complement the chips.

We all had a fun little beach holiday and want to go back to Cinque Terre sometime before we come home – the kids like hiking as much as we do and they have deep water swimming right off the rocks along the ocean (you climb into the water on some rusty ladders that are somehow attached to the giant rocks and swim out to other big rocks more rusty ladders) and we (correction - he) told the kids they could try it next time. And that’s why you need two parents for any given situation – one who wants to keep you safe & warm (and sometimes fed) and one to nudge you into the water, no matter how cold & deep.