Views of Cinque Terre cities from the water taxi

Various photos of the villages in Cinque Terre

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The very end.

Just to recap our last few days and close this adventure while getting ready for the next one scheduled for February 2017.


July 4th:  We explored Bologna on foot and by on and off trolley.  It is a very old city and houses the first university in Europe.  Home to several miles of porticos and originally towers, now only 2 left in the entire city since WWII was not kind to Bologna.  It is disappointing in that graffiti mars many of the building.  We continued with our walking to explore but did enjoy an early night.  We have taken to hiding the air conditioner controls so when someone comes into the room to clean it is not shut off.  It is a warm humid toasty 88 degrees and easy to understand why stores and businesses close from 1:30PM until 4:00PM.


July 5th:  A day trip to Ravenna.  There are great mosaics in the churches.  We walk to the train station,  only 15 minutes away (unsure who is the timer) and make the train with 2 minutes to spare.  Ravenna is an hour to the south and with no map we set out to explore utilizing only the street signs.  Map in hand we proceed to get lost but located all the churches, a gelato stand and even Dante's tomb.  Then back to Bologna and the walk to the center of town,  much improved when we have only packing and organizing to do for the trip home in 2 days.  Hard to believe it has been 3 weeks.


July 6th:  All of our bags with us we head for the train station (this time by private driver).  We will spend the day at Lake Maggiore and Stresa.  There is a bag check at the train station otherwise we would have spent the day in Milan.  We take several boat rides to see some gardens.  These are the first gardens of the trip.  If you can believe it Dan turned down several opportunities as it was too hot.
It was a slow easy day as we will make our way to stay near the airport tonight since the flight for the US leaves at 8AM.  Our last chance for gelato and pizza in Italy.


Final thoughts:  25 hours of travel time to get home.  Tons of walking, stairs and sweating.  My Spanish did not help in Italy, but I think I want to go back with more language skills.  It was a great trip and I wouldn't have traded any of our experiences because I don't think I could have made them any better.


Ciao

Our last day in Italy we did a day trip to Lake Maggiore

A day trip to Ravenna to see the mosiacs.

Photos from our exploration of Bologna. It should be the city of porticos.

After cheese, there's prosciutto, balsamic vinegar and a drive in a fast car. Great day!

Photos from the Dromo visit

Photos from La Scala

Our final few days!

Most of the next entries are being done while waiting in the AA lounge😀 We have a 3 hour layover, it is nice to have a comfy chair.
We had such poor internet connections or no downtime to blog on several days, I was way behind.

July 3rd:  Today we travelled to Bologna.  We are scheduled to take the food and Ferrari tour.  The pick up is at 8 AM hence the need for the early train from Milan.  We are taken to a Parmesan cheese maker and are actually able to be up close while they are processing the cheese it was really a learning experience, our guide actually discussed the process and all of the steps.  At the end of the tour there was tasting to do and there is a difference with the aging.  Then off to prosciutto manufacturing, again up close and personal.  In the US you would be behind glass walls or watching a video.  If you ever get a chance try truffle prosciutto it is the best.  It also  improves with a glass of Lambrusco.  Balsamic vinegar is next.  This is a family run operation and each baby when born gets there own wine to ferment to vinegar.  The best was balsamic on gelato!  Then off to the Ferrari factory, Dan did decide to go for a test drive and we have some great pictures to prove it.  It was a little tamer than he imagined.

Our day was then brought to a close with a 6 course lunch and all the wine or spirits you wanted.  I might have to start making fresh pasta since it was wonderful.  We got back to our apartment and after all the wine, food and early start after late night, I passed out, felt better the next day so we could start exploring again.

Success back in Milan

Reba and Verl were able to change train reservations so we say goodbye and safe travels.  We head for our hotel we still have several hours and a trip to the top of the dromo is in order, no stairs just the lift.  Although there are more than enough stairs when we get to the top!

Plenty of time to eat even ordered room service and get ready; at about 6:50 I look at the tickets for the opera, oops starts at 7:00 PM and it is pouring rain. We get there and they are kind enough to seat us in a box and we can move to our seats at intermission.  I liked the box seats better!  It is a truly amazing venue and they do interesting things with projections on the back of the stage to show depth and location changes.

In the morning we travel to Bologna.  I am thinking an early night since the opera started at 7 PM and our train leaves at 6 AM.  How wrong I was.  The opera finished at 11:45 PM.  Almost 5 hours with 2 intermissions, at least the rain has stopped.  The opera was very doable since there was a screen with an English translation of the dialogue.  Next morning at 4:30 AM is going to be hard, but we actually understand the Milan train station so our confusion won't delay us and we can sleep on the 1 hour train ride.

The last pizza and gelato back to the US in the morning

Friday at last

Well we did approach the tour guide about the possibility of shopping instead of hiking.  Success 6 of us opted to shop out of the 10.  Dan decided to hike and became the tortoise .  He had over  12000 steps by lunch and states it was the best hike since it was through a forest part of the time.  Lots of flowers and greenery.   Not to mention mostly down hill.

Shopping was a success, seems July starts sale season, unfortunately everything is expensive compared with the US.  Shopping is all about the looking anyway.

A trip back to the airport and water taxi station.  The heat in Venice remains and makes hiking a definite option.  We are staying on the island of Lido, which is away from the canals of Venice.  There is the Adriatic Sea and a real beach.  We do have a mission for Venice that is the gondola ride.  So after a view of the beach and my feet in a different body of water we head back to St Marks square to complete my bucket list item.  Dinner, gelato and the boat ride back.  On arrival back on Lido we get on the wrong bus so have a bit of a hike back to the hotel.  You know what they say travel is an adventure.

Tomorrow Reba and Verl head back to Switzerland and fly home.  Another challenge to get where we need to be with as little fuss.  We need to be there early so Reba can try and change train reservations.  We had lots of help from the hotel desk clerk who told us what boat to take that was the fastest.  Hopefully tomorrow will be easy.

Is it Thursday already?

We are packed and ready to go.  It is a drive to the mountains above Cortina and we take a chair lift up to the Refugio.  Then a short walk to the 5 towers, lots of stairs to climb and history to discuss since this is an outdoor museum for WWI.    The scenery has a distraction facto since the Italian army is practicing maneuvers including rock climbing, being dropped from helicopter, rappelling to the ground.

Then the climb to the next Refugio where Cafe Averu is located.  Of course it is all up hill.  Along these trails there are no mile markers or elevation changes.  The trails do have numbers and a suggested time for how long the hike will take.  What ever the time, mine is doubled.  This is a straight uphill hike with only one or two switch backs.  There is still snow present on the side of the trail.  Perhaps this was why Reba and I got the pep talk last night.

Lunch ends in a flurry, the original plan was a downhill hike to the lodge, but a storm has just rolled in and the plan is to hike back down to the first cafe and take the cable car down and then drive to the lodge.  Good news is down hill I am pretty fast, bad news is this was the day we did not bring the rain gear.  It started to rain about half way down and was hailing by the time we reached the cafe.  Good news is it cleared up for a while and we had rain that night.  Dinner was at the lodge so no need to go anywhere.  Unfortunately our room was at the end of the hallway and we had no internet.

A big discussion during dinner was to do a hike after breakfast and then travel back to Venice or see if we can skip the hike and just go shopping in Cortina.  I bet you can't figure out what group I will want to be in.

Views from the meadow hike