La Bella Italia
July, 2010, Nanaimo Magazine
By Lesley Lorenz
Two weeks in paradise. I’m still floating and gloating over a magnificent honeymoon in Italy.
We took the train from Milan to Venice, and while I had premonitions of the city of canals being ultra-cheesy, I was whole-heartedly wrong! It is beautiful beyond words, magical and romantic, and easy to wander into a non-touristy part of town and enjoy the achingly beautiful architecture reflected in the waterways. An evening gondola ride down the side canals was silent and mysterious, and as we poled our way under a stone bridge, we looked up to see a full moon throwing silver ribbons into the canal ahead of us.
The ancient walled city of Lucca was our next stop, a smaller, less touristy destination. We enjoyed lunch in the Theatro (a huge round plaza) and an excellent view of everyone’s laundry which flapped from every balcony. Curved old ladies whizzed over the brick streets on bicycles, their daily shopping in a handlebar basket. No helmets, dressed in skirts and fashionable shoes, a cigarette perched on their lips. Viva la difference!
By train, we zipped through the countryside, past marble mountains and on to Cinque Terre, five beautiful villages perched on the coast and declared a national treasure. Breathtaking! We saw homes and gardens terraced into the surrounding mountains, dotted with church spires and tiny restaurants. Next, we rented a car and our adventure really began. Snaking up the Tuscan mountainside, one lane barely accommodated the mini-vehicle I was driving, and yet we would encounter trucks, and find ourselves spilling into the grassy shoulders or patiently backing up to allow passage. The drive was so treacherous that we traveled for over 2 hours in second gear. Our final destination was worth the effort though. High above a gorgeous valley speckled with sun-drenched villages, our hosts ran their B & B in a 450 year old homestead. Besides the tremendous view, we were greeted in the morning by a cacophony of birds – including a cuckoo bird that was, to quote our hostess, “looking for his wife”. We visited Rome at the end of our trip, rooting our way through the dusty ruins in the heat of the afternoon, awed by the grace and grandeur of the 2000 year old architecture.
A trip of a lifetime – and I stepped where Caesar once walked, and slept where the cuckoo bird called to contemporaries of Galileo.
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