Cinqueterre: Part 1

Friday ETD: noon
Friday actual TD: 2pm

The plan:
Drive three hours Friday, stopping on the way to see Capalbio, a medieval town in the hills of Tuscany; to swim in the Mediterranean Sea in La Torba; to make it to our yurt in a tiny town by 8pm.  Finish drive to Cinqueterre Saturday morning, having all day Saturday and Sunday at Cinqueterre.

What really happened:
Friday:  We walked around and ate gelato in what felt like fancy and extremely well-kept Capalbio, spent 40 minutes at La Torba in the warm sea (Italians are adamant about calling it the sea and not the ocean), arrived at our yurt a little after 9pm Friday.

Saturday morning we grabbed yogurt and fruit at a tiny market and ate on the sidewalk,  hit Pisa for half an hour (It was a three hour wait to climb up -- sorry, kiddos, not this time.) (And who knew that the leaning tower looked like something for a wedding cake -- I expected antiquity, gray, weathered: I got white, bright, frosting-like.  The tower is happy, fun, festive.  It's surrounded by tourists and smiling people taking photos.  A little like a wedding.), then sat in traffic for over an hour and finally got off in a random town and went to a playground where kids played and we adults stretched.

In a wonderfully lucky moment of productivity (it's hard to abandon completely the to-do list mentality), we used the photo booth on the sidewalk to take four identical photos of everyone (except me) to submit to Italian government for residency permit.  Sitting in the playground with Daniel, I thought, Who gave us permission to be in charge of these kids?  We have no idea what we're doing.  We don't actually know where we are, we don't yet have a place to stay for the night, and somehow we are in charge of these kids.  I was reminded of taking our oldest home from the hospital two days after he was born.  Walking out of Newton-Wellesley Hospital, I eyed the nurses, thinking, You're not going to stop us?  You're really going to let us take this newborn home even though we have no idea what we're doing?  And we just kept walking.  We were now in charge of this life and we had no qualifications at all.

Phones out, we searched for a place to stay on a Saturday night in the summer in the Cinqueterre region.   We narrowed it down to a beautiful hotel in Cinqueterre with a view of the sea for $287/night and a large apartment outside Cinqueterre for $81/night.  We clicked the latter.

Hills and hills later, Daniel drove the narrow roads to Claudio's apartment.  On our right, some boys hollered out and offered to move the cones in the driveway.  We met Claudio, the owner, his gaggle of a soccer team practicing in the driveway since they had lost their match earlier in the day, and looked out at the view of hills and a solitary church up high.

The kids watched the soccer-playing Italian kids, and eventually, Connor asked, Possiamo jugare?  One boy stopped, whistled loud, and yelled to the others.  Adding Connor and Hannah to teams, they continued their game.

Claudio sat with us and reviewed maps and restaurants and hikes for Saturday and Sunday.  I left the map and instructions at a restaurant Saturday night, we called Claudio again on Sunday morning, and
he met us in Spezia to show us where to park.  He pointed us to a pasticceria for a breakfast of cannoli and croissants (reminding me of the two dozen donuts and half dozen muffins we used to get from Dunkin' Donuts every Sunday when I was a kid..."That's so unfair!" our kids say since we don't do the same for them...).

It's 11am on Sunday, and we're in the wrong line to get train tickets from Spezia to Cinqueterre.