During our Cinque Terre stay, we opted to stay in nearby Porto Venere instead of in one of the five towns. It was more accessible (you can't drive your car in the towns), and another town to visit. We left after work on Friday and arrived just in time for sunset.
Our friend Sally had found the hotel we stayed in and it was amazing. Even Michael got excited and started running around when he saw our balcony. The owners were probably in their 70s, and got such a kick out of Michael's reaction they told our friends all about the other "American baby" when they checked in. He said they had the balconies extended a few years back, so it was almost like having a little yard overlooking the water and the main part of Porto Venere. We had some deck chairs to relax, and a road ran right under the balcony which provided endless entertainment for Michael watching all the cars and bikes. At one point, he woke up from a dead sleep, sat straight up and yelled "BUS!" when he heard a bus drive by.
The first night we all settled in, had a laid-back pizza dinner on the balcony, and enjoyed the view. Living in a foreign country can be stressful and overwhelming sometimes--everything becomes complicated when there's a language barrier and a process for accomplishing things you're not familiar with. We don't always realize how stressed we get until the stress is gone, and it seemed like for all three of us in our family, it melted away as soon as we stepped out on that balcony. It was a nice change!
We spent all day Saturday exploring the five towns of Cinque Terre, so Sunday we opted to explore Porto Venere a little big. We had a nice lunch with our friends at a little restaurant by the water.
Michael loved watching everything happening around the water; the waves lapping up on the rocks, the birds flying around and landing in the water, the sailboats drifting by. He had a great time running around watching everything and climbing things.
After dinner we walked up the hill a little ways up to the old city, built on the rocks overlooking the ocean. The rocky cliffs reminded me a lot of the beaches we left behind in California and I think that made us feel even more at home.
There was another old, small church there too, right on the side of the cliff. It was really pretty inside, and you could climb up to a viewing platform on top for even better views of the coastline.
After lunch and a little exploring, we got gelato (we always get gelato) and then started back to our cars so we could head home and recover before everyone had to return to work the next day.
Robbie and I decided to take a little detour on the way home to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was only about 40 minutes out of the way, and we've heard that while it's cool to see, there isn't much else to see in Pisa that would make it worth a 6 hour round-trip drive from Ferrara.
We got there and parked without incident. We had a grumpy baby on our hands so we took our silly tourist pictures holding up the tower, walked around the Field of Miracles for a few minutes, then just decided to head back towards home before Michael totally lost it on us.
I would have enjoyed going inside the church and the baptistery. Apparently the acoustics in the baptistery are such that you can sing harmonies with yourself. This is (so I hear) demonstrated by a guard every 15 minutes or so. The line for tickets was pretty long, and we didn't think anyone would want to hear Michael screams echoing around and around, so we skipped it.
Maybe sometime if we're in the area again, we'll try again. Pisa was very impressive, the buildings were massive, and it was fun to see and cross off our list of places to visit.
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