Slow food, fast bikes, leaning towers and climbing cliffs

Since our mechanical misadventures when we first arrived in Italy, we have finally been able to start exploring.

We headed up the coast and inland to a lovely Agri-turismo farm.

The view from the farm

Agri-turismo is a system of accredited farm-stay holidays. With some you can help out around the place, others require less investment from you. Often home produced and cooked food is on offer. It is a great way for small scale farmers – often promoting organic farming – to make some extra money, and for us to get a better insight into what it takes to feed us all.

We camped at Ca’ du Chittu in Carro, Liguria. When we arrived we were greeted like old friends by husband and wife team Ennio and Donatella and their son Mattia.

The main house, which also has rooms to rent

The gable end of the stable block, now lovely rental masionettes

Although they hadn’t yet opened their camping ground for the season, they let us pitch next to the house and then use the indoor facilities.

Nice spot for a spot of camping

Camping is among the fruit trees, which were full of lovely blossom when we were there

The finishing touches to the new stable block

Beautifully decorated and very inviting rentals in the former stable block

Even the gas point is treated as though it is special!

We also availed ourselves of Donatella’s home cooking and were delighted to find that the family are followers of the Slow Food movement. Slow Food is all about growing quality, without chemicals and with attention to the whole growing, harvesting and distribution cycle, not just the profit from the end product.

Slow food proponents, including making their own honey

Slow food cooking – here making gnocci with beetroot

Our four course dinner was a zero-kilometer meal, having all been raised, plucked, picked and harvested from their own land. Bellisimo!

While we were there, we managed to hook up with fellow travellers Pete and Frances – friends of Geoff’s who have been riding their motorbike from Australia for the last eighteen months, through Asia and the Pacific.

Pete & Frances with Geoff & Sara

It was great to swap stories and experiences over another home-cooked feast.

Swapping travel stories over dinner

Carro is close to Cinque Terre and many of you had urged us to go there. It is a series of five coastal towns, clinging to the rocky cliffs that run from the Apennine mountain range and drop straight into the sea.

Vernazza

It doesn’t seem like the best place to build, but we are glad they did!

Corniglia – the only one of the Cinque Terre towns that doesn’t run down to the sea

Riomaggiore – one of the Cinque Terre towns

Cars are banned in Cinque Terre – but they would be pointless anyway in these steeply stepped and terraced towns.

The image doesn’t do justice to the incline!

A train runs along the coast and through the middle of all five, but the local ferry is the nicest way to see the best of the scenery.

Say what you see signage

The local Cinque Terre ferry has to come right into the rocky shore

Admiring the views from water

Looking back along the Cinque Terre coastline from the local ferry

Boats line the route to the ferry that runs between the five towns

When we arrived in Cinque Terre it was bathed in sunshine and glowing with Mediterranean colours.

Colourful Vernazza

Cinque Terre kitty

Riomaggoire and the Cinque Terre coastline

It is hard to imagine that a devastating landslide swamped the towns, killing eleven people, only three years ago.

The mudslide of 2011 filled the streets, claimed lives and still haunts the pretty town

The famously precarious coastal walk is still closed as a result.

Not feeling the love – the coastal walk from Riomaggiore is still closed after the mudslide of 2011

Part of the coastal walk of Cinque Terre

But locals seem defiant, and after generations battled just to carve a life out of these rocks, it’s not surprising they are determined to rebuild and go on.

Parasols and rowing boats fill the main square

Mural at Riomaggoire showing the hard labour required to build the towns in the cliffs

From coastal paths and rural idylls, we hit the road again and headed to Bologna, a classy place with old world charm, mile upon mile of porticoed avenues and some lovely laid back piazzas.

Bologna is a very elegant city

There are 40km of collonades in Bologna

Neptune always seems to get good fountains

Italy – romance, religion and endless talk

Bologna is also home of the Ducati motorbike. So of course, we promenaded the factory floor as well.

Nothing stops the famous red bike

If you work for Ducati, you get a 35% discount on your bike. Your bike gets its own parking spot out front.

Reserved for employees’ Ducatis – not for employees of Ducati!

If you don’t work for Ducati and you don’t have one of their motorbikes, you get to peer through the railings.

Hankering……

I’ve got my bike out front…

The latest model is a Diavel – a beast of a bike, but not a Monster (Google this joke if you don’t get it!) that looks good in red and black. Father Christmas, take note.

Like us, you may well have thought that there is only one leaning tower of note in Italy. But like us, you would be wrong. The symbol of Bologna is not one, but two leaning towers and they have an excellent angle to their dangle.

The leaning towers of Bologna

The base of one of the leaning towers of Bologna

Now you can really see the Bologna lean

While Bologna might have numerical supremacy, Pisa still holds the crooked crown of leaning towers. The tower began to keel within three years of the start of construction and before they had barely got four stories up.

How they managed to do one building so straight and so totally cock-up the other……

It is amazing that the builders who produced such solid beauty in the cathedral could make such a hash of the tower.

The Piazzi dei Miracoli with its perfect lawns

It rained a lot while we were in Pisa

They stood in the rain, we had hot chocolate and macaroons and took photos through the window

Raining happiness in Pisa!

Many corrections have been attempted and now, although it is clearly off kilter still, it has been declared to be safe for the next few hundred years.