Pavia

We wandered around Pavia a bit in the evening and had a nice dinner. It did turn out to be an above average food day, but it could have been a lot better.
Matt by the covered bridge in Pavia:

Stuck in Modena

(picture)
After lunch we caught the train towards Bologna further East. In Modena the train stopped in the station and an announcement was made that there was a problem with the tracks ahead. We sat there for at least an hour before we decided that it wasn’t going anywhere. Matt went and argued with the guy at the ticket counter for about 15 minutes in order to get a 2euro refund on the unused part of our fare. Eventually we caught a train to Milano and then another one to Pavia. It ended up being a long day of travel without much sightseeing.
We later found out that there was a big MTV festival in Bologna which we would have seen had we gotten there. The train that was stuck was packed with high school aged Italians on their way there. Italians dress extremely fashionably pretty much all of the time. The newest fashion in Italian men’s haircuts is the mullet. Almost all of the younger guys on the train had full on mullets. I kid you not. It was pretty funny. Maybe this craze will be sweeping the U.S. sometime soon.

Turtles in a fountain in Parma

Parma

On Saturday Matt and I decided to go visit Parma and Bologna. I was excited as I hoped that it would be a good gastronomical day. We caught the train to Parma and strolled around the town a bit. It was a nice colorful little town. We saw some of the sights and more importantly had Proscuitto di Parma sandwiches for lunch. They were delicious.
A few shots of Parma:

Names

I still haven’t figured out why European cities have such different names in different languages. It makes trip planning unnecessarily complicated. In Nice I bought a train ticket to Ventmille not sure if it would be arriving at the same station as Ventimigilia in Italy where I needed to catch the next train. When I bought the ticket from Vienna (Wien) to Venice (Venezia) I learned that it is Venedig in German. The worst was when I tried to buy a ticket from Genova to Monaco while I was in Monterossa. There was some confusion as to where I wanted to go after I told the lady Monaco. Eventually she said “Monte-Carlo?” and it was resolved. I found out later that Munich (Munchen in German) is Monaco in Italian. Not confusing at all.

Waves

I had about an hour to kill in the border town of Ventimiglia between trains. There was a little street fair going on and I got to sample some more excellent Ligurian foccacia bread. I walked over to the water to say goodbye to the Mediterranean and was shocked to see waves. Little waves, but waves nonetheless. Too bad I didn’t have my surfboard.

Nice - Pavia

Today I headed back into Italy to meet up with my friend Matt in Pavia. The weather had turned bad and there was intermittent bad weather. I think I was lucky to have nice weather during my four consecutive beach days. The trip was fairly uneventful. Matt met me in Pavia and we just hung out at his dorm the rest of the day since it was raining. By this point in my trip I was starting to feel pretty worn down. I’d been on the move for about two months and I was no longer as eager to be out running around all day.

Villefranche Sur Mer

Later in the day I went to Villefranche sur Mer which is located between Nice and Monaco. This beach is in a little harbor surrounded by high cliffs. It was very scenic and probably my favorite beach of the day. The beach was all public. I swam and floated around for a while in the water. The water in the Mediterranean was probably about 75 degrees which was nice, but not as warm as I had expected.
As mentioned previously, the Mediterranean is like a lake. That is a bit of an overstatement because I’ve seen lakes with bigger waves. At one point in the later afternoon a few rogue waves suddenly washed up maybe 20ft onto the beach. Lots of people were sunbathing right next to the water and they all got wet. It was pretty funny. Those were the only things resembling waves all day.

Juan les Pins

I went to another beach a little closer to Nice in a town called Juan les Pins. This was also a sand beach and was recommended by a guidebook I had. It was nice as well, but about the same as Cannes with most of the beachfront being private.

Cannes

The first stop was Cannes. The beach was sand here although 90% of it was private (you pay 20 euros or more and they give you a chaise lounge and an umbrella). There are two little public sections at either end of the main beach.
I’d given it plenty of chances in the last few days, but today I decided that going to the beach on the Mediterranean is really boring. I’m so used to going to the beach in California and going surfing, playing in the waves, playing volleyball, playing horseshoes, drinking beer etc., but here the only thing you can do is sunbathe. There is no fun to be had at all. Even going swimming is boring. The Mediterranean is like a lake. The only redeeming factor is the topless women, but even they are not as abundant as I had hoped. I would choose the beach in SoCal any day over the Med. I spent a few hours in Cannes before I moved on.

The French Riveria

Thursday would make it four days of going to the beach in a row. My time on the French and Italian riverias was turning into a little vacation within my trip. After so much frantic traveling I was getting a little worn down too. I got an all day train pass for the region and set out in search of better beaches than Nice.

Hostel Nice Camelias

I stayed at the Hostelling International Hostel in Nice. Like the other HI hostels I visited it was cheap, modern and conveniently located. Not too much else to say about it.

Niçoise Salad

For dinner, I ventured out in search of a place where I could find a niçoise salad. After eating, I remembered that I don’t really like nicoise salads all that much. I guess the sacrifice was alright for the opportunity to eat a niçoise salad in Nice. Nice is really bustling with foreign tourists, especially Britons. I heard a lot of English spoken in my two days here.

After a few hours in Monaco I hopped on a train to Nice, which is in a different country, but it is only a few minutes away. In Nice I made my way to my hostel, dropped my stuff off and headed to the beach once again.



The beach in Nice is devoid of sand, it is just rocks. I had been warned about this in advance, but it was worse than I expected. Lying on rocks is not very comfortable.



It did have this little artificial patch of sand, but it was dumb looking. It was getting late in the day, so I hung out for a while and watched the sun set before heading back to the hostel.

Some sort of regatta going on outside of the harbor.


Last time I checked, Luxembourg doesn’t exactly have an extensive coastline


There was an outdoor cow art exhibit in Monaco with cows spread throughout the city.




The grocery store in Monaco had these digital price displays. I wonder if they can change the prices between when you pick something up and when you pay for it?

After leaving the casino I walked around the formula 1 race track which for a normal person would have been boring, but for me was cool. Here is one of the more famous turns.

Grand Casino

I wanted to go into the casino at Monte Carlo and at least play a round or two of cards just to say that I did. The casino didn’t open until 4pm which is very different from the 24 gratification you can get in Vegas. A little after four I waited in line with a bunch of cruise ship tourists to get in. They scan your passport and make you pay 10euros to get inside. I reluctantly agreed to pay only to discover once inside the casino that the only thing you could do was play slot machines. I wandered around a bit and was impressed by the classy décor. One room (the Salon de L’Europe) had a card table and I went in and wandered around before some guy ran up to me and told me the room was closed. I asked him if there was anywhere I could play table games and he said not until 9pm. Although disappointed, I had the great idea to go ask for my money back since there was nothing to do inside the casino. It worked and I got my 10 euros back after getting to wander inside the Monte Carlo casino. I think I prefer Vegas.

Valet parking at the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo. This has to be the best valet job in the world.


Mercedes, Maseratti, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Ferrari. Which does not belong?

Let’s play again. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Opel, Mercedes. Which does not belong?

Lady Moura

This yacht in the harbor was ginormous. Turns out it is the 6th largest yacht in the world and is owned by a Saudi businessman who is also a UT alum. Check out yachts number 2 and 4 on this list. I guess if you want to date Paris Hilton your family has to own a huge yacht.

A view of the Monaco harbor

You can rent your very own James Bond boat down by the harbor

Monaco

Monaco was basically what I expected, a bunch of rich people, expensive yachts and fast cars. There wasn’t really all that much for someone like me to do there, but I still enjoyed wandering around.

This was one of the first things I saw after leaving the train station in Monaco. It was a pretty cool sculpture. I later saw a bigger version near Nice.

Cinque Terre-Monaco-Nice

Early Wednesday morning I got up and caught the train from Monterossa to Genova. I think I stood out on the ride because the whole train was filled with Italian businessmen headed to Genova in the morning. I ate breakfast in Genova while I waited for the train to Monaco. The train ride to Monaco went right along the coast, but after a while it started to look the same with miles and miles of beaches and resorts. This stretch between Genova and Monaco is the Italian Riviera and includes places like San Remo. I spent a few hours in Monaco before heading to Nice to spend the next two nights.

As daylight was beginning to fade, I headed back down the hill. The trails between the ridge were not as well marked as the main runs and I ended up wandering through vineyards, abandoned houses and even a herd of goats. When the trail went away I took a road back toward Corniglia. The setting sun produced great views.






I arrived in town just as it got dark and caught the train back to Riomaggiore. I was pretty tired after all of that hiking. I think my hiking today rivaled some of the epic hikes I did in Colorado, but with the added bonus of the beach.

Again like in Switzerland I didn’t see any wild animals on my hike, although according to this sign, squirrels are allowed in the park.

This was the largest slug I had ever seen. My foot is in there for scale.

The High Road

Lounging for a few hours got me ready for more hiking. I didn’t want to retrace my steps from earlier, so I decided to go up. There are other sets of trails which head up the ridge. You can see from the map below the route that I took from Monterossa up to the monastery at Madonna di Savoire. What the map doesn’t show is that the trail climbs more than 2000 vertical feet up to that point.

The reward was a spectacular view of Monterossa below. The photos don’t do it justice.




I followed the ridge back to the South hoping to make it all the way back to Riomaggiore. The open ridge quickly became dense forest as the trail climbed further. The high point was 812m (2660ft) above sea level. I saw a few other people, but they mostly seemed like locals. The hike ended up being a lot longer than I expected. I traversed all of the distant ridge in this picture.

Vernazza-Monterossa

The last section of the main trail is also very nice, but by the time I got out on the trail it was very crowded. The trail is very narrow at times and it begins to get to the point where you take a few steps, move aside to let people pass, take a few more steps and repeat. Starting early turned out to be a great decision. The views are still very nice.
Monterossa in the distance


Parts of Cinque Terre look a bit like the California coastline near Big Sur and other areas although the sea is a bit more blue here.


The beach in Monterossa was a welcome sight after the long hike.


After eating a quick lunch I went and relaxed on the beach for a few hours. It was a nice way to cool down.

Vernazza

Vernazza is a colorful town with a natural harbor. When I arrived things were picking up and there were lots of people out (mostly tourists like me). The Cinque Terre is supposedly an unknown destination among tourists, but there are plenty of them here. It is one of the nicer places I visited on my trip so I can’t really blame them for overwhelming the place. Some other shots of town:

Corniglia - Vernazza

The section of trail between Corniglia and Vernazza was by far the best. It climbed out of the town on the hillside high above the water passing through vineyards, olive trees and other lush vegetation. The cinque terre are cultivated by farmers who have created stone terraces in the steep hillsides. The landscape is very interesting because it has been significantly shaped by human hands, yet it retains a natural beauty. This section of trail is also the most rugged and it took a while to reach Vernazza. The trail was still largely empty at this point.