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I’ve noticed a trend. Every time that I come back from travelling and write a blog about it I start with the words “only a fool would…” Spend a whole winter in Norway? Check. Three countries in one weekend? Count me in! Christmas in Iceland? Absolutely.

This time it was cycling from Prague to Meißen, nearly 230km or around 45km a day. If you get on your bike regularly that might not sound like much, but I’m what you’d call a fair weather cyclist. And the weather in the UK this summer has been neither fair nor summery. So as I sat on the plane at Heathrow I was both nervous and excited. I would get to see a lot of great towns and scenery en route, but I’d have to work for it.

I’m going to cover what I saw (and how I coped) over the next few days. Come back to see:

• Prague (Czech Republic)
• Prague to Melnik (Czech Republic)
• Melnik to Litoměřice (Czech Republic)
• Litoměřice to Děčín (Czech Republic)
• Děčín to Pirna (crossing the border from Czech Republic into Germany)
• Pirna to Meißen (Germany)

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The Cinque Terre — a series of small, connected coastal villages — has been on my, admittedly rather long, list of places to visit for some time, but when I first flew out to Tuscany I didn’t quite know how achievable it would be. Sure, Google Maps said that it would be a two hour drive from the villa, but I wasn’t completely sure that I was using the right address and I have been late several times when relying on directions cribbed from the Internet.

Having been there nearly a week and roughly established the time required to get to Pisa, more or less the half-way stage to the Cinque Terre, I decided that I might as well try to get there.

By the time I got past Pisa I was questioning my sanity. I’d had to get up early which is something that I never consider to be a good start to a day. I’d have been willing to overlook that had it not been raining. Heavily. It was the kind of rain where the water bounces from the bonnet and the wipers running at full speed still result in a blurred windscreen and visibility barely beyond the front of the car¹.

Still, having made it that far I decided to continue.

As I approached La Spezia — the last big town before the five villages — it cleared up and when I got to the first village, Riomaggiore, the clouds had lifted slightly and there was even some blue sky. How lucky could I be?

Not lucky enough! When I pulled off the highway I found that the car park was full. What to do next? Head back to La Spezia and get the train or continue on to Manarola hoping that the car park was less full?

I decided on the latter. Taking the turn off the SP270 I was surprised to see plenty of parking by the side of the road. At the bottom of the hill was a car park which is where I stopped.

The route down to the water-front was further than I was expecting. First I passed a church which was perched over a great view. The path continues, looking worryingly residential for a while. Am I going the right way? (Given the lack of other options I assume so.)

I round a corner and a long stream of cafes and restaurants starts, pausing only temporarily for a slightly raised square. Many of these places have greeters encouraging passers-by in, and most have pictures of the food on the menu — always a bad sign in my book. I’m pretty hungry by this point and am forced to stop in one for a quick sandwich, which the waitress somehow manages to drop in my drink!

By the time I finish my latte the sun is out properly and it’s getting comfortably hot. I decide that I’ve come all this way so I will, at the very least, walk along to the next village. There are no obvious signs but there’s only one path along the coast so I guess it must be that one.

It is. And it’s beautiful. Before long I can see back to Manarola, and from this distance I can’t see the pushy waiters and the postcard stands. The walk is along a decent path and is fairly flat, which means that I can concentrate on the views rather than my breathing.

That is right until the final approach to the next village, which I now discover is called Corniglia. Just past the train station² there are approximately a million steps heading up a steep hillside.

By the time I get to the top I am desperately in need of an ice-cream. Perhaps it’s just the locals way of keeping the good stuff for the worthy, but the gelato here looks much better than that in Manarola.

I sit and relax, looking out over the sea, admiring the view and thinking how happy I am that I made it here. True, it was a long drive and I only managed to quickly have a look around two of the five villages but it was worth it. I’d happily come back and try to give the area the time in deserves.

1. I may be slightly over-dramatising events here. Nevertheless, the rain would have made walking from village to village incredibly soggy and miserable.↩
2. All the towns are connected by a train line that starts in La Spezia.↩

Walled cities are a Tuscan specialty. I’d been to a few in the last couple of weeks and, on paper, Arezzo looked to be another gem in the making.

However shortly after arriving things did not look quite so promising. Although an old city, much of what you can see on first entering the city is dull, generic office buildings, including one company amusingly called “multiass.”

Inside the city walls things immediately get… confusing. I walk down a street. To my right is a church, ahead are a mess of signs pointing in every direction, each one presumably a place of interest. With no guide book on the city I had no real idea what any of them were and arbitrarily picked “right.”

To cut a long story short(er), this was almost certainly not the best choice. After a mostly fruitless search for interesting sights, I looped back and accidentally found the Duomo. The inside was as lavishly decorated as you might expect for a Catholic church. In one cubby-hole¹ a service was being taken. Maybe I should have gone and got a panini earlier as the wafers and wine seemed mighty tempting at this point.

Immediately behind the church is Il Prato, a large park by the Medici Fortress and with views over the neighbouring area. I’m not sure of its significance, but there was a huge cemetery visible also.

My opinion of the place having rapidly changed from ambivalence to enthusiasm, I decided to stay a little longer. Unfortunately this required relocating the car from it’s temporary home near the multiass. To get back to the car I tracked the most direct route back, which included wandering through Piazza Grand, apparently the most beautiful square in the city.

Locating another parking space could have been easier. Without going into detail about any of the almost certainly illegal manoeuvres made, I will say that the signage in Arezzo is somewhat lacking. With plenty of one way systems and areas off limits to non-residents, it’s not a city to tackle without a map.

Still, having found somewhere to park near Il Prato, I failed to find anywhere decent looking to eat despite the area being well renowned for its cuisine.

Still, I’m pleased that I made it to Arezzo. Despite my initial misgivings, it is most certainly a city worth visiting. But next time I’ll know to turn left.

1. I kind of want to say transept here but I’m not completely sure.↩

After the disappointment of Pisa¹ I was looking forward to the highly regarded city of Lucca, which is only twenty five kilometres north-east up the SS12.

Like Pisa the parking situation was dire and it took several attempts to find somewhere to put the car. The comparisons to Pisa end here, however, as I immediately liked what I saw.

Immediately inside the walls are those very typical narrow, cobbled streets. There were no shortage of shops with extensive displays of meats and cheeses, bread and cakes. These all needed investigating. While I’m sure that most of these places see a good number of tourists passing through, they’re certainly not at the level of tea towels or cheap models of local sites.

Of course, Lucca has no shortage of churches and squares. There are, however, things worth seeing that are not shops, religious monuments or rhombus shaped. The first is the clock tower (Torre delle Ore), which, apparently, is the oldest tower in the city. The clock still works, though I’m not sure from exactly when it dates. A few people have noted that the time is often not correct — this is Italy after all!

The second is also a tower, this time called Guinigi. It is unusual because it has seven oaks growing from its roof. I have subsequently read that having a garden such as this did not used to be particularly unusual. However I’ve never seen such large trees sprouting from the top of a tower and so will include it as a point of interest.

When I headed to Pisa in the morning I wasn’t completely sure that I would be able to squeeze in a look around Lucca also. I’m glad I made the time.

1. The disappointment also includes the failure of my regular camera. These images were taken on a Canon PowerShot A95.↩

I really wanted to like Pisa. When I last visited in 2004 I came away fond of the area around the leaning tower but unimpressed with pretty much everything else I saw of the city. It was grey and bland and unattractive. But I was hoping that I had been wrong. It had been overcast and rainy, and I had had to rush around the place. Perhaps I had just not done the place justice?

This time, at least, I had the weather on my side, just not the traffic¹. I ended up driving almost completely around the city, through some very narrow street clearly designed well before cars frequented them, before finally managing to get parked just inside the city walls.

Approaching the campanile from the east I remembered one of the things that I had disliked from my first visit: the streets nearby were filled with cheap trinkets and identical looking tourist trap cafes and restaurants. It’s the most “touristy” place I’ve ever been to in Italy.

However, once you get past the ornaments, aprons depicting Snoopy or Bart Simpson holding up the tower, the calendars and the books in six different languages, the site is impressive. The Duomo is amazing. I get a little annoyed that most people swept straight past it to see the Leaning Tower but that’s my problem.

The gimmick of the tower is — at the risk of stating the obvious — that it leans², which makes it easy to overlook the fact that even if it worked as it was designed it would still be worth visiting. The detailed maisonary is at least as good as that on the Duomo.

After a quick coffee I decided to return to the car and make for Lucca.

1. Or my camera. The images you see here were taken on a Canon PowerShot A95.↩
2. Indeed, they’ve just finishing making sure that it continues to lean for the next few hundred years.↩

A few days ago when I drive to Poppi I saw signs for Rufina and Borgo San Lorenzo. Today I decided to head for the latter and stop off in the former.

First stop was the Vine and Wine Museum, which I found at the end of this long row of tall trees.

After the last few days of rain I was annoyed with myself to be so relieved to get out of the hot, bright sun. Inside there were tables littered with leaflets publicising local events, wine tasting tours and the museum itself. In the distance were murmuring voices but by the entrance, near the tills where you’d expect someone to be taking tourists money, there was no-one.

I thumbed through a couple of leaflets. I assumed someone would appear shortly.

Nothing.

Next a pamphlet about para-gliding something that, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is not exactly my cup of tea. Then art appreciation. Horse riding. And wine tasting. The next was actually in Italian and so have no idea what it was about.

Eventually I get bored and I cast off my English reserve in order to find someone to pay, or at least manage to sneak around and not find someone to pay.

The Vine and Wine Museum is, well, exactly what it says on the tin. The exhibits show a whole host of vine growing implements, from hoes to watering-cans, and then moves onto the wine making process. The text was all in Italian, so if there was an explanation of why they put their wine bottles in a straw basket — fiascos — I couldn’t read it.

Back out in the sun I take a wander around the rest of the town. As with pretty much everywhere in this part of Italy, it’s attractive and charming

In the end I found that there was much more in Rufina than I was expecting and I never made it as far as Borgo San Lorenzo. (Sorry if you found this page after Googling for Borgo San Lorenzo. I couldn’t really tell you in advance without spoiling the story.)