The Five Lands

trekking Cinque Terre and touring Tuscany

By Where's Herr Gruber?

November 3^rd, 2020

Hi again,

With the virus catching up on us and lock-downs starting all over Europe again, we think now is a good time to reminisce sunnier days and tell you guys about our last weeks in Italy. To be honest, we don't feel super comfortable writing these stories about our travels, posting pictures of sunshine and happiness. Especially when we know that most of our friends and family are stuck back home, having a hard time during ‘lock-downs’ in Germany and the Netherlands.

Emy shared this thought with some friends back home and they assured us that they are always happy to hear from us, read what we are up to and it actually cheers them up to see our pictures. That made us feel a little bit better, so here we go. Hopefully it story will cheer you up as well :-).

Passing the mountains (again)

On the way from Parma to Cinque Terre we spend a very cold night in the mountains at 1.100m. For Emy, as a Dutchie who grew up in probably the flattest country on earth, seeing mountains is still something magical. It is also so crazy what a bit of altitude can do to the temperature. One minute we are sweating in the office of the Carabinieri in Parma (see last story), the other our toes are freezing at 1.100m with four degrees. So there we were, cozying up drinking tea with our heater on. We have a very powerful diesel heater installed in our van, which heats the whole thing up to level Finnish Sauna in less than ten minutes. For this night, we didn’t mind!

So after a cozy night, and a sunny morning, we packed up, made our way down and looked for a camping close to Cinque Terre. We found one in Deiva Marina and installed Herr Gruber there. By that time our spare lock didn’t arrive in Italy yet, so we didn’t want to just leave him at a parking lot when we would take the train to visit Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre

The five villages of Cinque Terre (literally: the five lands) are quite famous, this World Heritage site is visited by swarms of tourists every year. We fully understand, since the villages and the walks on the pathways in between them are absolutely beautiful. The only other way of traveling to and between the villages, except from walking, is via train or boat.

So we took the train to Vernazza and walked to Monterosso al Mare in little over two hours. A beautiful walk via small paths through rugged steep landscapes, the occasional olive tree, lots of steps and sea vistas at every turn. Quite stunning and impressive. Although normally the villages and the paths can be overcrowded, we mostly had the paths all to ourselves.

Tuscany

What is a visit to Italy without seeing the rolling hills of Toscany? Right, that’s what we thought. So we left Herr Gruber at a campsite at the Tuscan seaside, got ourselves a rental car for a couple of days (thank you ADAC) and visited Florence, Lucca and Pisa. The tower of Pisa is still leaning, the hills are still pretty and tourists still find their way to visit all of it.

After that it was time for a more rural side of Tuscany and we parked up between the olive trees at a small agricampeggio close to Roccastrada. We stayed here for a couple of nights, relaxed, enjoyed the sunsets and waited for our package from the Netherlands with all our much needed spare parts for Herr Gruber. That came and we took off in the direction of Brindisi, to catch the ferry to Greece.

Molise

Although we first had to cross to mountain range again (so: another cold and cozy night) we spend some nights at the coast of the Molise after that. Swimming in the salty sea, booking the ferry and stocking up on some Italian goodness for our pantry before leaving the country.

Off to Greece

On the 10th of October we took the ferry to Greece, which we feel has been the right choice. After we left Italy we saw on the news that the corona-cases were rising. For the last three weeks that we’ve been in Greece it has been really okay here, corona-wise. Although tomorrow a partial lock-down will start in the north of the country. At the moment we are still in the south of the Peloponnese, where everything is really relaxed and laid-back. We are planning to spend some time on a farm helping a family with the olive harvest from mid-November on though, we actually miss doing some work... Of course, we'll keep you posted on that adventure and on our last few weeks in this amazing, wonderful, beautiful and friendly country.