And one day, just as quick as the blink of an eye, you wake up and find nobody surrounding you in Vernazza, in Manarola. You can find parking places everywhere, and they are all free of charge. You walk around without bumping into selfie sticks, shorts that are way too […]
Nature
36 posts
Punta Mesco, the imposing treeless rock that juts up out of the Mediterranean and marks the northwest boundary of the Cinque Terre, is actually fifty percent within the confines of Levanto. But since you can’t actually see it from Levanto unless you are in a boat, it’s probably fair that […]
It took us four years, but we finally made it up to the summit of Monte Rossola this past weekend. Ever since our trusted boat captain Marco told us about the views from up top in 2011, we have wanted to go, but between the kids and the job and […]
When we moved into our new home in the village of Le Ghiare outside Levanto, we inherited a water pump. All our new neighbors were complimentary about our luck to have said device for the following reason: with that pump you can water your entire garden without paying for municipal […]
For some reason this afternoon I got thinking about the Gulistan, the revered Persian poem by Sa’di. As fate would have it, I had the chance to visit the mausoleum of Sa’di in Shiraz Iran in 2000, a wonderful garden / memorial for this great poet of gardens. Gulistan means […]
Cinque Terre hiking has been so long synonymous with the Via Dell’Amore, the famous walk from Riomaggiore to Manarola along a paved trail that hugs the cliffs and coastline, that when it was closed at the end of last season because of an incident involving falling rocks and some very […]
Liguria is, more than anything else, a long thin coastal stretch with mountains at its shoulders, and its entire complex of history, culture, and society is tied up to the sea and these geographical factors. And so the winds of Liguria are of great importance. There’s an easterly wind howling […]
The wonderful lemon festival that takes place every year in Monterosso in the Cinque Terre has been pushed back a week due to bad weather, which is no surprise, because the weather has been lousy all spring. Scheduled for yesterday, the new date is Sunday May 26th. It has been […]
I saw a friend of mine on Fb complaining about the weather forecasts that seem to have kept a significant number of tourists from coming to Levanto and the Cinque Terre this long holiday weekend. His point was that the weather simply wasn’t so bad: not sunny, but warm and […]
When you own a piece of land that is part of a precious historical interchange between man and nature, you are inspired to do your best with it, even when it is a losing proposition financially and kicks your ass every time you hump up and down it trying to […]