Motoring on: Portofino to Chianti
Whether you call it an RV, motor home, or camper van, we decided to try a house on wheels for the first time! Italy seemed like the ideal foray into motor home camping since anyone who knows Junior and I knows we aren't exactly road warriors. In Italy, none of our drives lasted more than 90 minutes. Perfect.
Since Monday was a national holiday, we picked up our rental motor home on Tuesday and left for Liguria, the region of Portofino and Cinque Terre. We stopped in Sestri Levante, a city halfway between Florence and Portofino. As it’s on the way to Genoa, the home of pesto and a certain salami, we ate just that. Here the pesto is served with pasta, boiled potatoes and green beans. And it was ridiculously good.
After lunch we then made it to Rapollo, the main city before the Portofino peninsula, and we drove our RV (Junior drove, I panicked) to Santa Margherita, a beautiful city along the water, tucked into the less intimidating cliffs before reaching Portofino. I kept expecting to see drop-offs around every hairpin turn. So our plan was to park the RV somewhere flat and rent a boat to get to Portofino, but as we arrived in the wind and rain, the boats were all docked. We went as far as we could until the signs stated we couldn’t continue with our RV given its size, and we had to turn around. We planned to stay in an RV camp nearby, but we missed the turn, got confused (first day in the RV!), and ended up on the highway heading back south. Both kids had fallen asleep, so we decided to just go all the way to the first village in Cinque Terre. Our friend in Florence had found a camping spot with a little view of the water near the first village in Cinque Terre: Monterosso del Mare. We snaked along the mountain road and luckily found the camping area just as the fog rolled in. We got the last spot for the night, parked, and dined in the RV on bread, cheese, strawberries, and carrots.
In the morning, the fog was even heavier. Our plan had also been to do Cinque Terre by boat for the day—driving the RV from village to village was too precarious, and hiking it with a 3- and 5-year-old was also out of the question! But when we woke up to more rain and fog, I started Googling “Cinque Terre in the rain,” and discovered that most people wrote about what you can’t do in the rain and fog. But the taxi drivers maneuver perfectly well in the fog, and so a driver took us down to Monterosso del Mare where we thought we’d eat breakfast and then get back up to the RV and drive out. We found a local pastry shop, drank coffees and hot chocolate, took a little stroll, and then when the rain stopped, we decided to explore some stairs. It turns out that at least that part of Cinque Terre isn’t all that treacherous—rain or shine. There are paths and stairs (albeit terribly uneven and slippery when wet…but hey, we are used to Lisbon hills and slick cobblestone, so this wasn’t all that hard!). We found our way to the top of the first hill, stumbled upon a monastery, and only then found the hand-painted signs pointing the way. The views were simply stunning. We found our way to the other side of the village, the part with the train station. If we were people who actually did our research before rolling into someplace, we would’ve known that we could’ve simply taken the train through all of Cinque Terre and stopped in all 5 of the villages—or taken it straight through in just 20 minutes! Given we don’t research, we wing it. And then we eat. We took the taxi driver’s other dining suggestion and ended up a (fancier than we expected!) restaurant where the fish and vegetables were extremely fresh. The kids shared a dish that’s also part of traditional Portuguese cuisine: full fish encased in salt, then baked. They have to crack open the salt encasing to then filet the fish, always done right at the table.
We finally left Cinque Terre late in the afternoon, and the drive out seemed far easier. We drove about 90 minutes directly to Pisa. The beauty of RVing in Italy is that you never need to be on the road for very long before you arrive at your next destination. That’s our kind of travel. After hooking up the RV in the camper park, we walked into Pisa. The walled city is lined with the worst kind of tourist stands with everyone other than Italians hawking cheap souvenirs. At least we walked directly into the entrance with the church and famous leaning tower. I don’t know the name of anything (not having done the research…), but the tower was pretty impressive to see, though the town felt too touristy. Maybe we just didn’t make it far enough to see what is authentically Italian and local within the walls of Pisa, but when the rain started falling again, we ducked into a pizzeria and enjoyed a lot of dough.
On day 3 of the RV part of the trip, we had breakfast at the pasticceria sharing the name of our daughter, Léoni. It turns out that we spelled her name “wrong” by French standards (Léonie), and given that her name comes from the French part of my family tree, one could argue we really did spell it wrong. But we learned on this trip that the Italians also prefer the name without the final "e"! (We did choose it this way, for the record!) We went to Collodi, the home of Pinocchio’s maker and now home to a Pinocchio kids’ park. Also home to the Garzoni Villa and Garden with, of course, a pretty great restaurant. I ordered the traditional Tuscan soup: ribollita. It’s a super thick, stalky vegetable soup with a few beans and chunks of bread that have soaked up all the broth. It was hearty and healthy and after adding a little fresh parmesan it was marvelous (afterall, I’m a Wisconsin girl!). After garden explorations we drove the RV to Lucca, a city we’d heard was “cute.” It turns out that Lucca was our favorite city on the trip. It’s a big walled city with a river running through it and the enormously-thick city walls have been turned into a walking and biking trail, lined with trees; it’s not touristy and calm, has cute local shops and more good food.
On Friday, we finally returned the RV, got a rental car, and drove out to the Chianti region where we had booked a boutique hotel (Villa Sassolini) in a tiny village high up on a hill. We organized a babysitter for Friday night and the hotel organized a wine tasting. The vineyard, I Selvatici, is a family-owned business now run by the 43-year-old son, Giusepe, who lives half of the year in the U.S., consulting with American vineyards and wine producers; the other half of the year he is at home running the estate and, it turns out, running all aspects of the business. He was the one to greet us when we arrived, the only 2 people signed up for the last tasting of the day. We loved his “Grand Tuscan” wine, had a great time talking to him, and he ended up calling a great local restaurant in the town below to book us dinner at a family-owned restaurant where the grandma makes all the pasta by hand. He told us what to order, and he was correct. The restaurant, Castelucci, is located in something akin to a strip mall and looks like nothing from the outside. The food, however, is out of this world—the best meal we have had in Italy. Hands down.
The next day we relaxed outside in the sun all morning, then walked around exploring the very tiny village in which the hotel is located. Church bells banged and several elderly people were out talking on street corners or sitting on park benches. Then it turns out that Prada had a huge office and shipping center 10 minutes away, and they also have a huge outlet store. We explored there and the kids loved everything glittery and shiny! We ate our final pasta dinner and had to pack up to fly back to Lisbon on Sunday morning. When we arrived in Lisbon, it was nearing dinner time. Traffic was heavy and we happened to be en route to Cervejaria Ramiro, so suitcases and stroller and all, we feasted on seafood and felt thankful to return to Lisbon.
