Gonging Gorzano

Our journey back towards France took us to the little village or farmstead of Gorzano.  It has a population of a few hundred and is about 50 km from Turin.  Our AirBnB accommodation was a newly renovated apartment which is part of a 100 year old farm house literally in the back yard of the village church...

The great grandfather of our host, Giulia, actually gave the land at the front of his property to the church.  Makes quite a pretty picture out the windows of our new place... only thing was the church bells bonging every half hour 24 hours a day!  Strangely enough we got used to them quite quickly and it didn't affect our sleep.

The front of the church makes quite a good picture too...

Check out the terrace we had with this place ...

... the perfect spot for a refreshing ale or bubbly wine, and also the site of our first ever encounter with a hummingbird hawk moth!  A moth that flies like a hummingbird to each flower to suck out the nectar.  Sorry, you'll have to google it.  He was too quick for me to get a picture - I tried many times, although it was after a couple of those refreshing ales...

Not far from Gorzano is the original capital of Italy, Turin.  We were stunned by its beauty - the huge arcades, arches and galleries...

... the palazzi (palaces),,,

... and the twin baroque churches...

On returning to the sleepy hollow of Gorzano, there were a couple of locals building what seemed to be a spaceship?!  Are we in a town of some sort of weird sect planning on leaving the planet? 

No, actually they were building a show ride for the local Gorzano Fritto Misto festival.  A 6 day hoe in on all things fried - meats, vegetables, and even fruit and biscuits!  Unfortunately we had to leave the day before it started..

Leaving was harda from Lago di Garda

For our taste of the Italian lakes area we chose Lago di Garda.  It's a massive lake, the largest in Italy and I think the photos speak for themselves on how beautiful this area is...

We stayed in a reasonable sized town called Desenzano del Garda which is on the southern edge of the lake.  Lots of restaurants, bars and cafes lined the edge of the lake around the old town.

How inviting does the colour of the water look...

Not far around from Desenzano del Garda is the town of Sirmione which is situated on a very thin peninsula - about 100 or so metres wide at it's narrowest!  Sirmione is home to the impressive 13th century Scaliger Castle...

The apartment we stayed at in Desenzano del Garda had this awesome 60s space age style vinyl bed - it was quite comfortable until you tried to roll out over the hard curved edges..

Captivating Croatia

We headed off for Croatia from Italy and all was going smoothly until about 10km from the Slovenia/Croatia border.  A massive 10km bank up of cars, motor homes, caravans right up to the border.  This 10km section took about 90 minutes!  We could have walked it quicker!  - on reflection, it was a Saturday and in peak holiday season.  Anyway once over the border we headed off to our first stop, Rovinj.
We stopped here in our motor home back in 2010 and couldn't resist returning.  These pics show why:

the stunning old town...

 the numerous inviting, beautifully decorated cafes...

 some of the potted gardens were pretty speccy too...

Here is the apartment block we stayed in...

 

you wouldn't necessarily have expected it but it looked great inside.  It was very nicely renovated and the location was faultless - 5 mins walk to a multitude of bars, cafes and restaurants, 10 mins to the old town. 

From our little balcony we also had our own version of a Tennessee Williams play to watch...

Our next stop in Croatia was Dramalj (near Crikvenica).  Our AirBnB place was amazing.  Here is the view of the sea and the island of Krk from our terrace (the garden isn't too shabby either)...

We drove over to Krk island for the day and here's our coffee stop in Stara Baska...

and the view back to Dramalj from the Krk village Silo...

Dazzling Dozza

Our next stop was decided purely by its location - it was situated sort of in the middle of three sites we were interested in - Bologna, Ravenna, and Ferrara.  The place we stayed at wasn't fancy-it was a newish apartment but it had no air-con and the temps were still in the high 30s and it was just off of a 24hr busy road, so sleeping with the windows open was not really an option.  Lea loved it.

But just a couple of kilometres away was the little old town of Dozza (the owners of the apartment put us on to it, otherwise we'd be none the wiser).  By now we'd seen a lot of historic old towns but this one was unique in that the walls were swathed with murals.  There were some gorgeous restaurants there with great views and food.  Dozza turned out to be a real gem!

Ravenna is famous for its mosaics.  We didn't quite make it into the town of Ravenna itself, however on the outskirts is a fantastic basilica - Basilica di Sant'Apollinare in Classe - which apparently has some of the best mosaics.  We weren't going to argue..

The apse is totally covered by a stunning display of mosaics...

 

Above the marble columns and arches are cameos of all the archbishops of Ravenna.  Just one of them looked to have a foo looking over it...

On asking one of the basilica's curators about it, we were advised that it was actually a mitre (the thing worn by a bishop on their head) signifying that this particular archbishop went on to become the Pope.
 

We drove into Bologna with our tRUSTY Peugeot GPS (really should do a separate post on our "brand new" car) guiding us to a car parking spot which we thought would be good for seeing the historic old centre.   Unfortunately this ended up being inside the Bologna ZTL (Zona Traffico Limitato) which if I'd have blindly followed the GPS directions and entered, we would have automatically been awarded a 100+ euro fine.  Anyway we fluked a 2.40Euro/hr park on a street just outside of the ZTL.

We wandered through the old centre of Bologna and what really stood out were the many arched porticos / arcades that lined nearly every street - ideal for keeping out of the searing hot sun.

Ferrara had another old town... and a novel (but not so effective) way of providing shade to nomads of the street ...

Tuscan treasures

We think this photo sums up the picturesque Tuscan countryside...

... olive groves, vineyards, pencil pines, and backyard pizza ovens.

On the way to our place in  San Gimignano we passed through the village of Colle di Val d'Elsa with its medieval centre on the top of the hill.

Our place in San Gimignano was superb and the hosts Ugo and Rosanna were even better.  On arrival they gave us a chilled bottle of the local Vernaccia wine which was delicious and offered us anything we liked from their vast fruit, vege and herb garden - took Ugo 2 days to water it!

We'd noted that some places don't have drying racks on the sink - so where do you put your dishes after you've washed them?

Voila, there's a freakin drying rack in a bottomless cupboard directly above the sink!  Italian ingenuity at its best.

A short drive from San Gimi is the city of Siena with its enchanting medieval UNESCO world heritage site, the historic centre.

We fluked the one day of the year when they hold a major event - a bareback horse race around the Piazza del Campo which is in the historic centre.  They put clay around the edge to make the track, pack the centre area and the edges with as many people as they can. Then comes the arduous task of trying to line up all the fiesty horses behind a piece of rope - this year it took around 30mins with a couple of false starts, one where one horse was facing the wrong way.  Quite entertaining.  The race itself is based on time rather than a number of laps.  It runs for exactly 3 minutes and whoever is in front at that time gets the chocolates.

This is the morning after...

Also within the Siena historic centre is the extremely stunning Romanesque and Gothic Duomo (Cathedral).  We thought the one in Florence was impressive!!  This one craps all over it!

... awesome.

Flustered in Florence

On the way to Florence we stopped in a pretty "little" fishing village, Camogli, for our espressos and some huge delicious bacci ball things...

We certainly lucked out with the location of our Florence AirBnB, there was a bar literally 2 doors down, and other bars and restaurants a couple more mins walk away.  Bellissimo!

The owners of the apartment left us some details on how to catch public transport into the centre of Florence, (and rough translations in English).  Should've been a simple bus and connecting tram ride.  A couple of minor snags... we missed our bus stop (the name wasn't exactly what they'd specified) and to make matters worse, their distance between stops is massive (not like our 100-200m stops in Adelaide).  Anyway we walked back to our tram station only to find it barricaded off.  There was a sign - we think it said "Tramline works from June-September" effectively cutting the line in two which meant we now needed to walk a couple of more tram stops to where the works ended... which way do we go, to the left or to the right...we chose wrong.  Anyway nearly 2 hours later we reached Florence centro!  Should've taken about 40 mins.  Did I mention it was close to 40 degrees that day!


A real eye opener in Florence was the magnificent Duomo - a green, white, and red marble gothic cathedral with a huge cupola.

Didn't do too much else in Florence that day... by that time we were well and truly buggered - and we still needed to do the convoluted public transport back!

Worse? How could it be worse? Genova, Genova, Genova

Apologies for the title, it's my Monte Python's Life of Brian coming out.  We actually stayed about 30km from Genova in a seaside town on the Italian Riviera called Varazze.  Our new digs were just outside of the town in a converted stable/granny flat out the back of a large house which was originally the servants quarters for the even larger house next door.

The hostess Gabriella was absolutely fantastic.  She gave us all sorts of goodies from fruity cake things, yogurt, milk, a cold beer on arrival, and even a bottle of the local lambrusco.  The night prior to us going into Genova, she even put together a hand written walking tour of the old town.

Genova has some magnificent architecture in the old town...

... but just off the main streets, there are some very dark alleys with some dodgy looking dudes sitting around the edges.  It's amazing how dark these alleys are even in the middle of a sunny day!  Our hostess warned us of these areas - apparently they have gotten worse since the massive influx of refugees.  No photos sorry - not the sort of places you set up for a shot or use a flash.  Call me gutless if you like.

Back in Varazze, we frequented a bar for a round of drinks (a beer and a glass of rose) and look what they provided with it...

... and this photo of tapas plate was after I'd hoed into half of it!  Pizza, salami, cheese, corn chips, salsa, olives, focaccia - who needs dinner!