Churches Galore! (Italia, Part II)

After our wonderful time in the Cinque Terre, CJ and I boarded the train for San Remo. Here's a map of the whole region, which should be interactive--that is, you should be able to click on it and explore for yourself some of the areas I mention. If you like.

View Italia in a larger map

I'm just going to jump right in, and let most of these photos speak for themselves. (Who am I kidding, I have lots to say about them, too!)

Here, the Russian Orthodox church in San Remo, which is a sight to see.

Apparently Tsar Alexander and his wife (whose name escapes me) were frequent holiday-makers in San Remo, and they built a church there. Interesting.

Here's me in front of the pretty yellow church across from our hotel.

I just really like this picture! I like bikes. What is this bike doing all the way up there?

Nice storage facilities in old town San Remo, apparently!

Left and Right: Some other really neat buildings we saw on our ventures through San Remo.

The beautiful stonework leading up to the Santuario della Madonna della Costa, a lovely church.

Inside, an elderly woman relayed to us in animated Italian the history of the church and the beautiful sculptures within, unfortunately the pics didn't turn out very well and we understood very little of what she told us.

One day, we decided to take a public bus up into the hilly region north of San Remo, which was a somewhat scary and nauseating experience, but was well worth it when we got off the bus! See what I mean:

The ruin of the Chiesa Romanica (Roman church) of San Nicolo, in the little village of Bajardo. This church was destroyed in 1887 by an earthquake which occurred during a service and caved in the roof, killing about 100 people. The church lies on a site once a shrine to druids, and has been the site of castles and churches since. It's so interesting to be in a place like this, where the pieces come together into a scrapbook of history. There are no signs, nothing to tell what's what--just the knowledge that some of this could be thousands of years old, while some of it only a couple of hundred, while still some of it even more recent.

Inside the church ruin, looking out through a barred window toward the valley to the south. The old columns were really beautiful.

Above: Some of the pretty decorations within the church ruin. On the right, the ceiling of the entryway. On the left, an altar, perhaps dedicated to St. Anthony.

Above: The view from behind the church ruin.

On a clear day, supposedly one can see into the Maritime and Ligurian Alps. On this cloudy day, unfortunately, we didn't quite see that spectacular view--but it was still awfully pretty.

A beautiful column, standing alone just outside the ruin.

CJ looks out over the valley in the medieval section of the village of Ceriana.

This was after we found a little cafe in the village to eat lunch--when the little restaurant owner realized we spoke English (and very little Italian), he ran out of the restaurant and down the street to find a man to take our order in English. Not necessary, but sweet-and entertaining! Of course it was either spaghetti or hamburgers. We both ordered the spaghetti, which was good--but unfortunately came with meat sauce. I was too hungry to be a strict vegetarian, and the man had been so sweet I hated to complain, so I just picked around it!

A view of France, to the west, from the beach at Ventimiglia.

I read about this series of Roman ruins at a site called Albintimilium, in the village to the west of us (called Ventimiglia). We decided to try and find them, as they included a Roman Theatre and I have always wanted to see one. Unfortunately, it was closed, but the theatre was perched right off the main road and we were able to see it from the sidewalk! This site dates back to the first half of the 2nd century. Fun to see the roots of modern day performance art and theatre!

CJ and I had an awesome dinner on our last night in Sanremo together. In front of me, you can see a demolished plate of Tiramisu. YUM. It was the best one I had the whole trip! (I tried several, in order to compare and contrast. A very systematic approach involved in finding good Tiramisu. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.)

Italia!

CJ and I flew from London Stansted into Genoa, Italy, where we caught a bus to the train station, and managed to communicate fairly well with the driver and a fellow passenger—through a mix of Italian and English--to know how much it cost and where we were going. Between my extremely minimal Italian, my fair knowledge of Spanish, and CJ's fair knowledge of Italian, we managed during the trip. However there were some interesting situations in which we found ourselves bumping up against the language barrier. I made sure to learn certain phrases, as one does when going to a foreign country, such as "Parla Inglese?" (Do you speak English?) "Buon Giornio" and "Buonna Serra" (Good day and good evening), etc. In this case, however, numerous people had also warned me that Italian men tend to be…a bit on the flirty side. Naively, I said at one point, "Well I am wearing my engagement ring!" Our friend Amy said "Oh, honey. They won't care about that." So, realizing I'd need to be extra-tough if these situations came up, I then learned these phrases: "non sotta interesatta" (I'm not interested) "non se lei era l'ultimo uomo sulla terra" (not if you were the last man on Earth), and "ho una malattia comunicabile" (I have a communicable disease). You can't be too safe.

Of course, none of this really mattered and these phrases weren't needed. Though some of our acquaintances were flirty, none were being too pushy, and most people were quite friendly and helpful. I should have spent my time more wisely, perhaps learning the phrase "a slice of pizza," which neither CJ or I knew…and, in fact, which I never did learn…

When we arrived in Genoa at the train station, we were starving but ready to get to our first destination, Monterosso (the Cinque Terre). CJ stood in line to get our tickets where we'd be staying for the first couple of days. The ticket agent gave her tickets for the next train—and she came back over to me and our pile of luggage (and I might mention here that CJ had packed a very large suitcase which was so heavy I asked if she had brought her lucky rock collection), and she said "we better hurry, we have a minute to find the platform." I realized she literally meant we had 60 seconds before the train departed, and so we grabbed our bags and RAN through the station, running up and down the stairs and hauling the lucky bricks up and down with us—as there were no escalators or lifts—and arrived at the platform just as the train was pulling out. Oh well. This gave us time to find food before our 2 hour train ride, so I again stayed with our bags and CJ went to find snacks. I repacked my suitcase while she was gone, at one point looking up to see her across the street at a little restaurant. She waved and made a motion that it would be a minute or two. A minute later, I looked up again to see her crossing the street with her hands full of soda bottles and pizza boxes. She had tried to order one slice of vegetarian and one slice of meat pizza. Instead, she got one vegetarian (a.k.a. cheese) pizza and one meat pizza. Oops. :) We proceeded to chow down in the middle of the platform, even though people looked at us like we were pigs!

We stayed in Cinque Terre for 2 days, and had a lovely time. It was really a beautiful place, although the weather wasn't quite as friendly as one would hope. Our first day ended up being rather nice, though, and we took an awesome hike to the neighboring town to the south, called Vernazza.

Above, the very recognizable rock just off the shoreline at Monterosso's "new town" section. It only took me about 14 shots to get the waves crashing in just right.

On our way, we stopped for lunch in Old Town Monterosso and enjoyed delicious fresh mozarella cheese, olives, and tomatoes (among other things). We had noticed the lovely old building, above, on our walk, which was at the promontory of a peninsula and was really quite a lovely looking house. We asked our waiter if that was someone's house, if anyone lived there. "Yes," he relied in a charming accent. "My mother!" He smiled, pleased with his jest, and then proceeded to tell us that this gorgeous abode belongs to a businessman who lives in Milano and only uses it about a week every summer. What a shame!

Above, looking back towards Old Town Monterosso and the little restaurant where we ate lunch (underneath the happy yellow umbrellas).

We proceeded with our hike, enjoying a lot of lovely wildflowers and wildlife (ok, just the one lizard) as well as the scenery.

Here are some of the awesome views along the Cinque Terre coast between the towns of Monterosso and Vernazza:

Looking down through one of the many vineyards toward Monterosso.

Another view of the extravagant house on the promontory in Monterosso, with the rock from above in the background there as well.

Looking towards Vernazza (hiding behind the cliffs), to the south, from the top of one the rocky cliffs.

The pretty little village of Vernazza.

Coming down to Vernazza, a closer view.

Here, we ran into a couple from Denver, and a guy from Oregon. We all stood around chatting for a few minutes and taking pictures of each other. Amazing that none of us realized our backdrop was not just the town of Vernazza, but the lovely and rare Italian telephone pole.

Friends in London

CJ was in London for a couple of days before the two of us (CJ and Laura) flew to Italy for a week. We went to some of the "usual spots" with CJ to show her around London. First, we took her to St. Paul's Cathedral. Here we are on the busy Millennium Bridge, the cathedral towering in the background.

I love the back entrance to Westminster Abbey--especially in Spring/Summer, it's covered in vines and leaves and is so beautiful! Derek was rather proud to have name-dropped, again, (one of his professors lives in the Abbey--see our earlier post on drinking wine in the abbey) and we got into some really cool parts of the abbey which are normally meant to be part of a paid tour!

Probably the best picture we've taken yet of this area--on CJ's camera, and Derek held it over his head in order to get a view over the hedge. We had just come out of the abbey, blinking into the sun. Dark clouds had just passed over the top of us, providing this very dramatic background, but the sun--starting to descend--provided wonderful light on this little cathedral by the abbey (I forget its name) and in the rear, Big Ben.