Journeys Text, p3

Although my 'romance' with Italy began in 1980 on a trip to Florence by train from Paris, I have faint memories of tiny hilltop villages hanging onto craggy rock covered hilltops which I saw outside the train window. They were enough to call me back one day though. Florence was full of art treasure as everybody knows, and none escaped me then. But my curiosity was burning to see the small streets, the countryside, even the old men playing cards in the piazzas. So in 1997 I took my 2 children on a marvellous trip which started in Rome, and went south to Positano and the famed Amalfi Coast (not so famous then). We stayed in the beautiful Hotel San Pietro which is completely carved out of the rock, and if you flew over it you could never identify it as a structure as it is completely covered in flowers. The first night we arrived later than planned and we were ready for a meal...we took a table on the terrace with a nearly 360 degree view of the sea, and a shaft of moonlight revealed a tiny fishing boat rocking back and forth (was this planned?)

It was and is an amazing place, and we swam on the beach which was below the hotel and reached by elevator. We fell asleep to the lapping of the waves on the rocks below.

From Positano we drove north to the Cinque Terre, a series of 5 small fishing villages which in 1996 were relatively peaceful and undiscovered. There are lovely walking paths from one village to the other, and one can walk along the sea, take a train to the next village, hop off and walk to the next one. My daughter and I settled on the beach at Monterosso and my son took off for a walk to the next village. It was a lovely day full of sunshine (I still remember it). I have revisited and have walked in all 5 of the villages. Vernazza is the most colorful and is beautifully positioned on the sea. The little fishing boats are nearly always pulled up into the piazza.

We drove from there to Lake Como, getting a little lost and nearly ended up in Switzerland... but as ever in Itlay, gettting lost is always visually rewarding.

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