Life is feeling pretty good!

Tuesday 10^th June

Sad to be leaving Venice today but we are headed back to a place we have already been to, but really liked. We travelled 380k today basically south and west to Volterra, which is in Tuscany. We took the autostrade for 80% of the journey and arrived in Volterra in the early afternoon – you can certainly cover the miles quickly and the bonus is that the autostrades are actually good roads.

 

Our hotel at Cavallino - the food was pretty good here
 - AND we got eggs for breakfast.
 I am not keen on the Italian style breakfast at all.

Our B&B is about 5k out of Volterra and has a lovely outlook over the surrounding farmland. We were here 3 weeks ago and it is quite amazing how the countryside has really dried off in those 3 weeks. The farmers have been cutting hay and ploughing. I’ll have to try and find before and after photos so you can see the contrast. Our hostess speaks no English so we are having very brief and basic conversations with a lot of ‘si’ and nodding of heads.

Our B&B at Volterra - beautiful views over the surrounding farmland.

Sun setting - and the views from the town of Volterra.
A lot browner than 3 weeks ago.

The Volterra countryside 20th May.

 It is still really hot here so we rested for the remainder of the afternoon and headed in to Volterra late in the afternoon to have a further look around and to have dinner. We took the easy option and headed to a restaurant we ate at last time we were here.

Wednesday 11^th June

Today we headed back in to Volterra to do some shopping and to have more of a look around the town. The first hour of the day was spent in the bank, I was going to say trying to do a bank transfer, but in actual fact it was spent waiting to do a bank transfer, and when I got to the teller was told ‘no can do’. The bank had a ‘take a number’ system and there were about 30 numbers before me. I briefly considered giving it up but while I waited it seemed that the queue never got shorter so the wait was going to be as long any time of day. I think maybe it was pension day because lots of the people in the bank came in with similar bits of paper. They certainly don’t do things in a hurry here – and everyone just waits and spends time catching up with their friends in the queue.

 

Street scene in Volterra
- not too many people here.

Statue in Volterra

Even though we have been in and out of Volterra a few times now, we are still finding interesting things to see. We explored all the nooks and crannies in town but we still have not visited quite a few parts of the town.  We had a good day shopping and met an interesting English couple at lunchtime and had long conversations about places we have both been and seen in Italy and France. Again we heard a lot of German today - seems that the Germans have travelled further in to Italy than just the beach area. 

 

The main street at night.

One of the churches in Volterra
- where we are dinner we had a beautiful view
of this church as the sun was setting.

The end of the day and we had a lovely dinner with a beautiful view over the Tuscan countryside. Life was feeling pretty good!

Thursday 12^th June

We are now at La Spezia which is at the bottom end of the area known as Cinque Terre. We arrived here just before lunch with the aim of hitting the tourist information centre to get all the info on visiting the villages of Cinque Terre tomorrow. Goal achieved and it was lunchtime. Something smelt pretty good and we followed the crowd (mostly older local people) to a ‘self service’ café on the pier. The food was all seafood and was actually pretty good – we figured the pensioners would have the good and cheap food sussed out.

The queue at the lunch venue .

The harbour at La Spezia and one of  the cruise ships in town.

There were 2 cruise ships in town today but we have watched both of them sail this afternoon. We can hope that there are no cruise ships in tomorrow but we will see what the morning brings. We have plans to hit the first ferry in the morning to get as much in the day as possible. The only thing against us is the hot weather that makes it pretty uncomfortable in the early afternoon.

La Spezia

La Spezia

Our B&B was again a little hard to find but this time it was just poor signage – Dora did take us to the right spot. The views from here are pretty spectacular and we sat outside eating dinner and soaking it all in. Another feel good night! The only thing missing are the friends we would love to share this with.

The view from our balcony - pretty stunning!