domenica 18 agosto 2013

Holidaying on the Italian Riviera


When Italians talk about their holidays, the first question is usually the same: are we going to the mountains or to the seaside? Understanding Frenchman and I were lucky enough to be able to do both this summer, as after our stay in the Valle d'Aosta and our friends' beautiful wedding, we headed off for a few days on the Ligurian coast, a.k.a. the Italian Riviera.

There are lots of lovely things to do in this part of the world. You can visit the Cinque Terre, the 5 gorgeous little fishing villages nestled in the cliffs west of La Spezia, mingle with the international jet set in Portofino, or hike the Alta Via dei Monti Liguri, high in the mountains which drop so dramatically down to the sea.

This time round, however, we decided to have a relaxing time at the beach and booked a little studio in the little fishing village of Laigueglia, half way between Savona and Sanremo. If you would like to do the same, here are some hints and tips from our experience:

Where to stay: there are hundreds of hotels in towns all along the coast, but we preferred to rent an apartment in order to have more space and more cooking options. We found ours on www.abritel.com, a site which has a good choice of accommodation with clearly presented information.

Transport: we had a hired car, but a train line runs nearly the whole way along the coast and there seemed to be plenty of buses. If you have a car, it's worth using the motorway for speed and high-up views, and the coast road if you want to visit the towns of the region at a slower pace. Be prepared for lots of tunnels on the motorway, and steep, narrow, twisty roads if you venture out of the town centre. Our studio was at the top of a hill that had to be taken mostly in first gear, and, for the safety of our relationship, I chose to let Understanding Frenchman drive it every time.

Activities: in August, it was too hot to do much other than stroll around the towns and go to the beach, but there are lots of trails in the hilly hinterland behind the coastal towns. The views are spectacular, but we sweated out about ten litres of fluid each on one little climb from the coast up to the ridge behind Laigueglia, so be careful!

Places to Visit: some of the towns seemed to be little more than strips of hotels, while others had more character. We liked Alassio for its shops, Noli for its architecture and history and Sanremo for its old town, which is a maze of dark stairways and little alleyways which manages to be both picturesque and a bit rough around the edges, and a huge contrast to its glamorous new town, seafront and casino. Sanremo also has pretty public gardens.

Choosing your Beach: at first glance, the Italian Riviera looks quite uniform, with endless promenades and narrow beaches covered with coloured umbrellas, but on closer investigation, we found quite a lot of variety. Most of the beaches are private, and you have to pay around 13 euros to rent a deckchair and parasol for 2 people for the day. While I kind of resent having to pay to go to the beach, I would say that if you plan to stay all day and don't have a parasol of your own, this is probably worth it, because the sun is so strong that spending the whole day without shade is neither healthy or very pleasant. Because we preferred to go to the beach a couple of times a day for an hour or so, we sought out the public beaches, which are easily recogniseable because the the parasols are a non-matching mishmash, rather than being uniform and arranged in straight lines. In Laigueglia, the public beach was stuck way out at the end of town, but Noli's was bigger and very central. 

It's also worth thinking about if you want sand or shingle, and deep or shallow water. We were quite surprised by the difference between Noli (shingle, and it got deep too quickly for small children to play there safely) and Laigueglia (which had sand and lots of very safe, shallow water.

Irritating Creatures: I thought that the sea air might chase away the mosquitoes, but if we hadn't had repellant we would have been eaten alive on our terrace in the evenings. We also spotted a few small jellyfish in the sea, but they were quite easy to avoid and nobody seemed too bothered by them.

Eating: Local specialities include mixed deep-fried seafood, and trofie (a type of pasta) with pesto. We got in the habit of having at least one gelato per day, with the best one coming from a shop in the centre of Alassio. I can't remember the name, but it had a long, curved counter perpendicular to the entrance and an enormous range of flavours. Finally, we were surprised not to find fruit and vegetable markets more easily, but there is a little supermarket in the centre of Laigueglia with excellent fruit and vegetables. We found it on our last evening and were so excited, we bought lots of delicious things to take home with us. We were also delighted when the owner of our flat offered us four big, juicy tomatoes from the garden to eat with our dinner one night.

We were surprised to find that there were hardly any other foreign tourists in most of the places we visited. Nearly all the other people at the beach seemed to be Italian families on their annual summer break.Our time in Liguria wasn't the most action-packed of holidays, but it was nice to relax, take in the lovely scenery and live like an Italian in vacanza for a little while!

sabato 17 agosto 2013

What Confetti Really Means, and Other Facts About Italian Weddings

 
Before I start, I need to be upfront about something: I am not an expert on Italian weddings In fact, I have been to a grand total of one wedding in Italy, and the couple were both British. But one of the delights of multicultural life (or friends have been resident in Italy for several years) is that sometimes you get to pick the best from each of the cultures and put them together to make something even better, which is what our friends did, and the result was a truly beautiful occasion which I can't resist writing about.*

Our friends got married at a civil ceremony in the Valle d'Aosta. They actually live in another part of Italy, but were able to give "personale" as their reason for choosing a different commune for their wedding. The legal part of the ceremony was quite short: the mayor confirmed the identities of the couple and their witnesses, read out the relevant legislation (3 articles), then read out the wedding vows as "Do you ... ?" questions, to which they only had to answer "Yes". They then signed the register and the mayor summarised what had been said and signed. I've found the legalese read out at other weddings a bit dull, but I liked the fact that the articles from Italian law focused very much on making choices in the best interests of the couple and any children they might have, including giving the children an upbringing appropriate to their capacities, natural inclinations and aspirations. After that there were two readings chosen by the couple, one in English and one in Italian and the bride's sister sang a song. (These were not allowed to have any religious content) Our friends also chose read out the English wedding vows to each other, but obviously that didn't have any legal significance. After that there was time for a few photos, then we all had to leave before the next wedding party came in.

As the couple exited the town hall, we all threw confetti ... but only in the English sense. The actual Italian meaning of confetti is the sugared almonds that guests are given as wedding favours in a little bag or box called a bomboniera much later on. If you threw Italian confetti at the happy couple, they might not stay happy for much longer!

This was just the beginning!
The reception took place in a hotel with a terrace and garden looking out over the mountains. It started with prosecco and aperitivo snacks on the lawn, and as it was about 2pm by this point, we were all hungry and tucked into the buffet. An hour later, when we sat down at our tables for the actual meal, most of us wished we had been a little more restrained - the menu covered both sides of the piece of paper ... and not because there were lots of choices! We started with four different antipasti, or starters, which included little cheese pastries, insalata caprese, local hams and sausages and vitello tonnato (veal with a tuna sauce). Luckily there was a break before we moved on to the next course, with a speech from the father of the bride. (This is a British tradition - I believe that at Italian weddings it's normally one of the witnesses who gives the speech.) The next two courses were risotto then gnocchi, followed by meat with a mushroom sauce ... luckily with more breaks and British-style speeches from the groom and finally the two best men, then we went out to the garden for desserts, wedding cake and spumante. (Prosecco and spumante are both sparkling white wines, but prosecco is drier and is usually served before the meal, while spumante comes afterwards.)

By this time we had been enjoying magnificent food for about six hours straight and as we finished up our desserts, we were also treated to a magnificent sunset over the mountains. Italian friends told us that this would normally be the end of the wedding, with people giving their presents and saying their goodbyes. The tradition is to give money in an envelope rather than actual gifts, and you can buy special cards with a pocket for the money inside for exactly this purpose. While our friends made it clear that the money was to go towards their honeymoon, the tradition in Italy that you give at least enough to cover the cost of your meal. This is also the case in France, whereas in the UK I think the amount spent on a present is based more on how well you know the couple, with friends who aren't particularly close often giving quite small presents.

Our friends' wedding ended with music, dancing and more drinking for those who could take it, but that part was definitely more British. The band did a great job of performing covers of English-language songs, even although they had admitted beforehand that they weren't very sure of some of the words. And so ended a very special day that combined all the best of Italian and British tradition!

*If you would like to hear more about Italian weddings from someone who knows what they're talking about, Leanne at From Australia to Italy has a whole series of posts on the subject that gave me a good idea of what to expect!


domenica 11 agosto 2013

Italians in Slow Driving Shocker!

The summer of 2013 presented me with the opportunity to tick off one of the items on my Ultimate Bucket List. Unlike a regular Bucket List, which is simply a compilation of things you want to do before you kick the proverbial pail, to qualify for the Ultimate Bucket List must meet a second criterion: an increased risk that the kicking might happen during your attempt rather than before or after it. 

Because I am a bit of a wuss, driving in Italy was risky enough to qualify.

My first experience of stereotypical Italian driving occurred when I was working in Campania during the summer of 2005 and a local guy who was, ironically, a member of the Protezione Civile offered to drive us to a nearby town for a party. After an hour long white-knuckle ride where Mr Civil Protection zigzagged along the motorway at double the speed limit, taking both hands off the wheel every couple of minutes while he called his friend for directions (the friend had no idea either) before overtaking on the hard shoulder and finally parking on the hatched triangle between the main road and the sliproad while he worked out where to go, we emerged pale-faced from the car looking terrified enough to convince someone else to offer to drive us back. This was followed by a year in Milan, where I never sat behind the wheel myself but was a fairly regular passenger and was impressed enough by what I saw to write this post. Which was why doing my fair share of the driving on our journey from the Valle d'Aosta to the Ligurian coast via Milan grew in my head to be something of an adventure, and worthy of the U.B.L.

When we popped out of the Mont Blanc tunnel and on to the autostrada, I realised that I wasn't very sure what the speed limit was. Italian roads, like French ones, often don't have times to tell you the actual number of kilometres per hour if it conforms to the national speed limit for that kind of road. In France, as long as there are other cars on the road, this isn't a problem, as the vast majority of people will be driving at precisely the limit plus 2 or 3 km/h . If you let your speed drop to even just 2 km/h below the limit, the person behind you will probably very kindly remind you to speed up by tailgating you and flashing their lights. 

In Italy, we had no idea.

Unsurprisingly, people seemed to be doing more or less whatever speed they wanted. 

Surprisingly, that speed, more often than not, seemed to be well under the limit, often by up to 20 or 30 km/h.

(In fact, the limits are exactly the same as in France: 130/110/90/70/50 depending on the type of road. The main difference is that the Italians seem to enjoy using a wider range of numbers for more dangerous sections of roads, such as 100 and 80 as well as 90 and 70.)

Our second surprise was that we never heard anybody honking their horn in the whole time we were there. Not when people parked in the middle of the narrow Ligurian high streets and nobody could get past. Not when we had to queue for twenty minutes to pay the tolls on the Turin bypass. Not even when we had to a poor old man hadn't understood how to pay for his ticket to get out of a car park and kept everyone waiting behind him, meaning that the time limit on everybody else's tickets ran out and we all got stuck inside.

All in all, driving in Italy was a relatively stress-free experience, apart from when we got stuck behind someone driving slowly on the motorway or couldn't honk the horn when we were desperate to get out of the car park. 

Just in case anyone is disappointed, as I was, a little, that driving in Italy isn't guaranteed to provide the adrenaline buzz I expected, I can confirm that people rarely use their indicators and you can still experience that sense of tension as the car in the lane in front of you repeatedly veers to the left as if it is going to pull out in front of you. I guess most drivers are still too busy gesticulating and using their mobile phones to keep their hands on the steering wheel.

giovedì 8 agosto 2013

Estate Valdostana

The Valle d'Aosta is a tiny region nestled in the north-west corner of Italy, next to the borders with France and Switzerland. Tiny in horizontal square kilometres it may be, but in its verticality it is grandiose, home to some of Europe's most impressive and beautiful mountains, including, but not limited to Gran Paradiso and the Italian sides of Monte Cervino (the Matterhorn) and Monte Bianco. It's also officially bilingual, having once been part of Savoia/Savoie/Savoy, but unlike in Italy's other bilingual region, Alto Adige/Suedtirol, whose questions of cultural and linguistic identity stem from much more recent and painful history, it carries its two languages with ease. Most of the people we met seemed to be mother-tongue Italian speakers but all were perfectly at ease in French. One old lady we met sitting outside her house in the hamlet where we were staying explained to us that, unlike most people in the area, she never learned to read and write French because she was at school at the time of Mussolini, but she could speak it fluently.

I learned to ski in the Valle d'Aosta five years ago, and I remember being awestruck as the instructor named the peaks of Europe's highest summits that were dominating the view in all directions. (Gran Paradiso is the highest mountain entirely in Italy, and as well as Mont Blanc and Monte Cervino, you can also see Monte Rosa, the highest peak in Switzerland and the second-highest in the Alps.) But if anything, I liked it even more in summer, when as well as the sweeping vistas, I could enjoy the detail of the tiny wild flowers, the stone houses with their characteristic slated roofs and the geraniums that spilled over every windowsill and flower pot. It's a story that tells itself better through photographs than words, so without further ado:

The centre of Vens, where we stayed. As well as this hotel, there was a church and some houses, and that was all.

Pretty Flowers

Roofs and mountains


Monte Bianco emerging from the clouds.

Wild Flowers

Butterflies were everywhere.

Wild Rose

Free range chicken in the town square!

Hiking up to the Lacs de Laure

Approaching the Lacs de Laure

Lac Inferieure

Waterfall

Looking across the valley from Vens.

Vens