Alpine views

I'm spending a week in the village of Landry, France -- near to Bourg St-Maurice, not far from the border from Italy.

It's off-season here, with ski season set to get underway mid-December. So I won't be experiencing skiing in the Alps -- I don't think my "ski legs" are quite in shape to appreciate the slopes anyway.

Still, there are beautiful views I've been appreciating on walks around the area. The most amazing thing is the clear, slightly turquoise colour of the streams -- flowing down from glaciers, I imagine.
And in nearby Bourg St-Maurice, there is an international canoe & kayak training centre, with markers set up hanging over the rapids.

If you look closely you can see vertical lines in the river -- they are poles suspended from wires over the river, for canoe & kayak training

Bourg St-Maurice -- a larger tourist centre in the area, complete with a farmers' market on the day I visited -- see the delicious cheese stand below!

Florence & Cinque Terre

I am closing in on the home stretch of my travels, with just a bit more than two weeks left before I return to Canada. And I am nearing the end of my time in Italy, as I decided to slip back into France for a week in the Alps, before meeting up with an old friend in Germany. It makes me a bit sad to think of leaving Italy, since I managed to actually pick up some basic comprehension and basic vocabulary in just a few weeks, and because there are so many beautiful places I have not yet visited. But my last few days have been fantastic, so I feel that I will end this part of my trip on a high note.

I spent a few days in Florence, which has such a world-renown reputation that I thought it might be hard for the city to live up to its fame. However, I was blessed with two mild sunny days there, so exploring the streets was lovely. The warm colours of the city seemed to glow in a special light. A cynical side of me acknowledges that the warm glow might be due to smog hanging over the city. Or perhaps not. In any case, there just seems to be this lovely quality to the light. Climbing the 463 stairs to the dome at Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, better known as the Duomo, was 100% worth it for the panoramic view over the city.

 

 

For the last couple of days, I have been exploring the villages of Cinque Terre along the northwestern coast of Italy. I have been interested in coming here for several years now, and I am so glad that I finally made it here! I would recommend it to anyone you likes to be outside -- and it's very nice in the "off" season now, as there aren't too many other tourists crowding up the villages (hypocritical, I know, to complaint about tourists!)  I have had a couple of great days of hiking in the area, even though most of the main coastal trail has not been accessible. I will let the pictures do the talking, although the photographs do not quite do justice to the beautiful scenery here, with a series of villages perched between the Mediterranean Sea and the steep rocky coastline.

The view along the trail I hiked on today.

In Manarola, the village where I have been staying.

The marina in Vernazza

 

Kiwis & olives, oh my!

For the last week, I’ve been staying in a village about 50km north of Rome, helping an organic farmer with the harvest of kiwis & olives. I didn’t know what to expect on my first day of harvesting kiwis, but it was quite easy and comfortable. The kiwis are trained onto metal lattices and hang just about at eye level for me. At times, I felt like I was looking at a sea of potatoes floating around my head. Of course, once you cut them open, there is no resemblance to a potato – beautiful green colour, and such sweetness. We loaded up 185 crates of kiwis on Tuesday, with most going to supply school canteens in Rome. Apparently, many European countries have a policy mandating organic produce in schools!

 

We started the olive harvest yesterday; it’s a bit more challenging than picking kiwis, in that there is a lot of coordination needed between the team of people working together. We spread large nets out between the trees and then one person – normally the main farmer, and today, an employee -- runs a large machine attached to their tractor, hitting the tree branches to shake the olives out of the trees. Once the process gets going, the goal is to keep moving so that the gatherers – four of us today --  gather the olives from the nets into bins and then run to place the nets beside the next trees down the line so the nets are in place when the machine arrives at each tree. It took me a while to understand the instructions for how to properly lay out the nets – my Italian vocabulary is pretty limited – but I figured it out eventually, between watching and seizing a few key words.

 

In the evenings, I’ve been learning a bit of Italian and eating delicious meals. On Sunday, I enjoyed a meal of home-made spaghetti that the grandmother of the house, Rosa, made that afternoon. I “helped” a tiny bit, but the technique of rolling the dough obviously requires some practice to perfect and she was none-too-impressed with my efforts! Along with our pasta, as well as meat and vegetables, we had homemade wine that my host, Pompilio, prepares each year with his own grapes. The family’s self-sufficiency is impressive, from wine to vegetables to the eggs produced by hens that are housed in pens just down the hill. Rosa also made home-made gnocchi the other day and last night, we roasted chestnuts in their fireplace. Delicious!

Rosa, our 80-year-old host, is becoming a legend among the family’s volunteers. Not only does she work all day long beside us in the fields but she prepares meals and seems to have more energy than me and the other young-ish volunteers. Today, Rosa drove the big tractor around the field while we gathered the bins of olives. She was the first woman in this region to get her license to drive a tractor. She’s quite an inspiration!

 

View from the village