5 Terre

The awesome Hubby and I have now been married 35 years. How did that happen anyway?

To celebrate, we started our vacation in Cinque Terre, Italy.
After a quick visit to the leaning tower of Pisa .....

 (I made John try to straighten it up a bit.)

(Here it is, peaking out from behind the big basilica next to it.)

we hopped a train to La Spezia and then got on the "Milk Train" to the Cinque Terre. Don't ask me why they call it a milk train, but it is basically the local train and we got tickets for on/off  to use while we were there, and then didn't have to worry anymore about how to get around.

Staying at the second most southern of the "Five Terraced" villages, an adorable hilled assembly of colorful houses and various buildings called Manarola, was a really good choice on our part. This picture was our window view from out rented room. About as perfect of a location as we could have possibly dreamed. At least 2 of the other villages would have been great choices too, but it seemed that we couldn't have lucked into a better view/building to stay.

 From the same window in our little "hotel" room, we could take this shot to the right. These terraces have been maintained and farmed for 500 years, and are located all over these hillsides on the coast. They grow grapes, beans, grapes, squash, grapes, figs, citrus, and most anything that we grow in Northern California.

Walking along the village paths we find all sorts of alcoves and treasures for photo opps.

There are also paths connecting the five villages and although one trail was closed due to land slides into the Mediterranean, we were able to successfully hike the "easy" treks.

 Staring off from Monterossa this was one of the most built up areas of the trail.

John is in his photographer mode and we are always lucky when that happens.

Honestly, the guide books say they are easy, but we did not agree. If I can walk a mile in 15 minutes, that is what I consider easy. If it takes me 1 hour and 30 minutes to walk 2 miles, I think it must be a little more difficult. It is not that we had to crawl up any sheer cliffs, but there were thousands of rocky stairs of varying levels and widths, as well as narrow ledges and creeks to ford.

 The mountains go right to the sea. This reminds me a little bit of Big Sur.  We should really take more advantage of living as close to Big Sur as we do. I'll put that into the mind catalog for future use.

 Looking back at Monterosso, which is the most be beachy of the villages with crowded pebbled beaches and wall to wall bodies lying on them.

The next village was only 4 km away and yet it took us 1.5 hours.

This is Vernazza and is also just so quaint and cute. All villages have a church with ringing bell tower in the middle of the town. I'm sure it used to be the most important building for the people so they made each church accessible to everyone.

One thing we always like to do is check out the inside of the churches. Some were fairly simple, but most had some pretty fancy ornate decorations reserved for the best building in town.

 After a nice breakfast of eggs and vegetables, we headed out to the next town of Corniglia. I'm kind of a shiny sweaty girl here.

Another building that each town seemed to have in common was an old walled castle at a high point. Romanesque in nature, they were the lookouts for passers by.

The wild flowers along the way were mentionable. Poppies, scotch broom, all sorts of pretty things.

Here we are approaching the tiny town. This one is up higher on the hill than the other 4, so you have to climb down stairs to get to the beach or the train station. We did notice there was a small shuttle bus between the station and the main area of town, but we of course didn't take that.

 In Corniglia we had lemon granite. Like a slushy but better. What we call granita's I think.

 Finally to the last town of Riomaggiore, where we ate again. I'm seeing a theme here.

 The train between towns is in tunnels most of the way, so the scenery is not part of the ride.

To walk to the train stations you also have to walk through tunnels. This particular pedestrian tunnel is in Riomaggiore.

John, sitting down for a wonderful meal where we just ordered antipasti. We had 12 different types of antipasti - including about 10 different fish dishes. Really unique sea food. And of course lemon gelato to finish it off.

One of the days we took a boat from the 5th town back to the 1st town stopping at each (except Corniglia) as we went.

View from the sea.

Our town of Manarola had some huge rocks that people jumped into the sea from. The girl in the black suit up there could never quite get the courage to take the plunge. She had quite a crowd cheering her on.

 Looking back onto Manarola from the path which is closed up ahead.

Another fun thing about Italy in general is their lack of clothes dryers, or rather their proliferation of clothes lines. This man here is adjusting the laundry from his balcony. We had a line from our window, and it made me want to have one even more in California. The clothes become so fresh and white when hung out in the sun to dry. I've been considering a line since before we redid the back yard at our house. Just can't quite come up with a cool solution in this small brain of mine.

My camera has some really cool settings and this is John experimenting with it.
Such a cool sketch of our little vacation town.

Overall one of the best vacation spots we have ever been too.

LOVED IT!!

Flower, Flowers Everywhere

We seriously had the most beautiful wedding flowers ever. Crystal and her team did such a fabulous job and there was only two issues that arose out of the day. One was the blasting wind storm, and I don't believe that she could have done anything about that, and the other was - oh, ... the wind.  Both of our problems were definitely wind related. 

One of the beautiful silver candlesticks holding a beautiful cut crystal vase on its top that was full of flowers was blown over in the wind, breaking the irreplaceable vase. My friend who had lent it to us for the big day was actually the one out of 188 people in attendance who found it broken and kicked into the bushes. Terrible. 

If anyone can find another cut crystal 4 inch wide vase that slips into a taper candle holder????

 This is the talented daughter of our florist and she was a great asset to the team. Stephanie and I, Crystal and her daughter all started the week by going up to the flower market and handpicking all the flowers that were to be used. We had a really fun morning with them, and it got us excited for all the work they were going to do.

 I had about 40 items of silver from various friends stashes and I had the florist fill tiny creamers and such with very small arrangements to place around the tall 30 inch rented silver vases that would go on the tables. Half of the tables would have this type of arrangement and the other half would be lower arrangements done up in larger borrowed silver bowls and serving vessels.

 We used silver teapots and vases for accents in the bathrooms, on display tables, etc. I think they ended up being my favorites.

 The morning of the wedding before everything was set up

Arrangements finished and placed ALL OVER the family room and kitchen of the house. This would keep them cool until they could be placed out on the tables in the heat of an 85 degree day.

The tall vases took me several hours to clean and shine which was just many of the things I had to do the last week of the wedding as they were rented so I couldn't do it ahead of time.

 We used our outdoor lanterns for cool arrangements too.

 Peony's and scabiosa pods.

 Tiny crystal ornaments to go on the tall arrangements.

 Some of the small arrangements to surround the tall vases.

 The swimmer setting things up in the pool. She thought this job was AOK.

 The side of the house was the entry point for our guests, and they made little tiny tussie mussie's to go in my silver cones that I use for ornaments at Christmas time.

 The wind came up, as the flowers were going out, and we had to quickly change the plan.  The tall vases would blow over, so we downsized the arrangements and placed the huge ones directly onto the tables. It definitely made things too crowded as we were serving the food family style and so we had to have room for serving dishes.

The main table was done up in crystal, sterling silver and old fashioned china.

 All the other tables were white china, rented stainless flatware and simple stemmed glasses.

 Corsages were beautiful as well.

 And the brides bouquet was fabulous, with just a bit of bling.

 hanging down were dendrobium orchids. Aren't they wonderful!

Flower girls had these little balls that were just adorable. (oops I forgot another issue. They forgot to carry these sweet flowers out with them when they marched out with signs that said Here Comes The Bride (and groom.) So Kara ran the flowers out after the little girls were seated on the stairs below the couple as they watched a short ring exchanging ceremony.

All in all the flowers were just beautiful and we were very happy with how they made the whole place look.