The Best of Italy

Here’s our last post on Italy to highlight a few of our favorite places in the country that we haven't wrote about yet:

After saying goodbye to the farm we took a short detour to the Chianti region of central Tuscany. We weren’t planning on stopping here but are glad we did. Besides the delicious food at Dario’s butcher shop (see our previous post) we enjoyed some good wine and even better scenery. Since it’s the off season we practically had the place to ourselves-the vast majority of the tourists are usually gone by mid-October. We had one day of rain, but otherwise great weather. Most of our time was spent sampling all of the fine food and wine Tuscany is famous for. In between meals we just explored the villages and enjoyed the scenery.

Chianti is full of picturesque views:

After leaving Chianti we headed north to Cinque Terre, a series of five small villages nestled between mountains and the Mediterranean Sea in northwestern Italy. We spent a few days exploring the area, walking the six miles of trails connecting the five villages. (Only locals are allowed to drive in the villages.) Each village was straight out of a travel brochure…pastel buildings hugging the cliffs between mountain and sea, small harbors full of brightly painted boats, narrow streets lined with cafes, old Italian ladies hanging laundry to dry from their windows, old salty fishermen working on their nets, you could go on and on. Pick your adjectives to describe the place…beautiful, breathtaking, quaint, spectacular, amazing, stunning…any one will do.

Manarola, in Cinque Terre:

Vernazza, our favorite of the Cinque Terre villages:

To top things off, Dustin even added another destination to the list of random European countries he’s surfed in. He spent an afternoon in Italy battling the large, messy wind swell pounding the coast north of Cinque Terre. Who knew there was surf in the Mediterranean?

After being less than impressed with a few “must-see” sights we’ve visited recently (The Leaning Tower of Pisa among others) we were wondering if we were starting to become jaded from all of our travels. Well, the Chianti area and Cinque Terre were just what we needed. Both places were stunning…no getting jaded there.

Lastly, we wanted to quickly write about an area we spent a few days exploring before working on the farm…the Nera River Valley. It’s right up there with the Chianti region as one of our favorite areas in Italy. Roughly halfway between Rome and Florence sits this quiet valley that’s far enough from the major roads that few tourists visit.

We spent a few days walking the trails through the rolling hills and exploring the quiet villages. For some reason this area had more hardwood trees than other areas we visited, making for some spectacular fall colors. Dustin even got a day of great fly fishing in on the Nera River, catching a bunch of medium-sized brown trout while Rachel hiked to a nearby village and soaked in the scenery. For the first time since New Zealand we were able to eat fresh trout for dinner.

The vistas of the Nera River valley:

Dustin hard at work putting dinner on the table:

Rachel's hiking trail:

Current update:
We’ve reluctantly left Italy for the one thing that could tear us away from the great food and charming villages of the country…great right-pointbreak surf. Besides a couple of sessions in Ireland that did nothing to satisfy our urge to surf (if anything, it just made us miss it more) we haven’t surfed proper waves in 5 months. Back in California we rarely went more than 4 or 5 days without surf…Dustin even surfed 100 times during our last 11 months in CA. Needless to say we’re anxious to get in the water, which is why we’re driving relatively quickly through France and Spain to get to Morocco’s legendary surf. We're not sure how long we'll stay in Morocco, but as long as there is good surf we don't plan on leaving.