This is a revamp of a post I wrote a few years ago.  My boys are teenagers now and way taller than me.  Don’t let that put you off!  It’s still valid!  I think they would still like doing quite of few of the things to do in Amsterdam listed below.  When they were under 10 years old, they tried out all the experiences on the list and adored them!

1. Take A Boat

Go on a canal tour.  There are a range of companies, all fairly similar, so there is no need to shop around (and drag your kids around after you!). The 1 hour tour gives you a good view of the city and is short enough that the kids don’t get bored. Be warned: there were no toilets on the boat we went on!

2. Park yourself in Tranquility

Take tram 4 to RAI, then cross the road and enter into Amstelpark. This sward of green is a paradise for children! The playground is large, with different structures for different ages. There is also a mini-golf course, which is a little expensive, but very well-kept. For children who like animals, you can find wallabies and alpacas, and for the treasure-hunters in your family, there are egg sculptures hidden throughout the park. There is also a miniature train that you can go for rides on.

3. Feed Yourself and the Ducks

In Amstelpark, go to eat some Amsterdamsche bitterballen (a delicious kind of croquette) with mustard at Parkcafé Zomers. Sit outside on the terrace near the lake and enjoy the peace while the kids feed/chase the ducks. The staff are very friendly and there is lots of room for the kids to run around.

4. Find Nemo

The Nemo Science Mueseum is located near the Station Centraal. It is a hands-on experiment mecca for kids. Be warned, it will be difficult to get them out of here!  The beautiful building has an oasis of sanity in the form of a roof-top garden, which has a beautiful view of Amsterdam. Important note: if you want to see one of the demonstrations that happen at the museum during the day, get your place at least 15 minutes before it starts or the kids won’t be able to see anything and you will have crying fits on your hands (learnt from hard experience!).

5. Talk a Walk

Take a tram to Dam Platz, then go for a walk in the West of the centre along canals and down tiny streets. The bonus is that if the kids are getting hungry or tired, there are plenty of cafés to choose from.  Just don’t go into a place that calls itself a “coffee shop”, as they deal in another kind of “pick-me-up”! Note: In the weekends there are many groups celebrating stag and hen parties.  With children, it is better to walk around this area in the morning or early afternoon. Avoid walking into the Northern part of Amsterdam from the Square as that is where the Red Light District is situated.

6. Eat in a Merry-Go-Round:

Near the Museumplatz there is a fantastic restaurant called De Carrousel Pannenkoeken that serves Dutch pancakes.  It has been set up in a converted carousel building.  Some of the horses are still in place. The service is fast, and the food is delicious. Even better, you can relax with an end of lunch coffee while the kids can go to a small area where there are comfy chairs a TV playing cartoons, and a blackboard on the wall for them to draw on.

7. Feel the Wind in Your Hair

Take bus number 391 from just outside the Central Station in Amsterdam to the unpronounceable Zaanse Schans and see fabulously restored windmills in a beautiful setting.  The bus takes 40 minutes, but drops you right at the gate of the park. You can enter the park for free, but if you want to go inside any of the windmills it costs you a small amount.  I think it’s worth it to go inside one of them to see the vanes and mechanisms from close up. You can catch a little passenger ferry across the river Zaans to the quaint little village, or just walk across the bridge. Don’t eat in the actually park if you can avoid it.  The food is really not that good. A perfect place for lunch is a restaurant called De Vijf Broers, just across the bridge from the park.  It has fantastic outdoor seating next to the river, a wonderful view of the windmills, and best of all, a giant sand-pit with toys in it, walled in on three sides so children can’t flee to the water! You can also catch a train from the tiny station of Zaanse Schans, which only takes 15 minutes to get to Amsterdam.  We caught it only on our way back to Amsterdam, as we didn’t want to have to drag the kids around the enormous Central Station looking for a train.

8. Soak Up Some Culture

There is, of course, the famous Van Gogh museum.  We didn’t even try to go in as there was a two hour wait outside, whether you had already bought ticket or not. The museum is small and fills up very quickly. If you can’t get to see the museum (or even if you do) you can find out more about Van Gogh and his paintings on a wonderful website called Artsy,  We did go to the Rijksmuseum, which was excellent.  To avoid any queues, buy the tickets for the adults in the family online before you go, and then go to the reception desk in the middle of the beautiful entry atrium (NOT the ticket windows) to pick up free tickets for any children in the family under 18. Start on the fourth floor and snatch glimpses of the masterpieces as the children pull you past.  Our boys loved a room on that floor where there is a huge replica of a battle galleon, and paintings on the walls of ships.  Just after that, there is a room full of enormous dollhouses, which I’m sure girls would love!  The museum provides a brochure for kids with a kind of treasure-hunt for them to follow.  They need to look for particular parts of paintings in different rooms. I suggest you limit your visit to an hour to avoid the worst of the “museum fatigue” that sets in quickly when children are present.

9. Go Farming

Visit the farm/petting park that is situated right in the middle of Amsterdam.  The farm is called De Dieren Cappel and is within walking distance of the Central Station.  They have all sorts of farm animals, such as goats, pigs, sheep and rabbits that the kids can pet.

10. Sail The Seven Seas

Well, the boat doesn’t actually set sail, but you can get the sea experience by going to the Het Scheepvaartmuseum (my kids think the name is hilarious!). This Maritime Museum is next to the Central Station. You can explore a real-life replica of a sailing ship which sunk in the 1700’s, plus inside the museum there are lots of hands-on activities for kids, plus different tours you can take around the museum.  Check out their website for details.

If you are planning to hit more than three museums or more, look into getting some kind of museum pass like the Amsterdam and Holland Pass or a museum card, at least for the adults.  The children often get in free up to a certain age, so it’s less interesting to get one for them.

By Lisa Watson

Just a few short hours before, I was calmly seated on a long-haul flight from the other side of the globe.  Now, I am holding on for dear life to the back of my Dad’s quad while he careens up and down hills, swerving between trees and splashing through boggy creeks while chasing a herd of bulls. I’m sharing the wooden platform tacked over the back wheels with one of the sheepdogs.  As I turn my head to search for the escaping bulls, the dog catches me full in the face with the broad side of her very long tongue. I’m definitely home on the farm in New Zealand.

The dogs adore taunting the bulls and look very proud of themselves when they get the huge beasts into the cattle-yards.  They’re being checked out before being sold tomorrow. When they are let out, I prudently stand up on the elevated ramp that you can see in the photo above.  These big guys are pretty wild and very intimidating when you are standing on their level.  Actually, they’re still very intimidating when you stand up on the ramp, but they have less chance of being able to charge you when you are up there!

The farm in New Zealand where I grew up lies at the end of a very long and windy gravel road. A grader comes from the town of Whangarei, about an hour’s drive away once or twice a year and trundles along the road to fill in all the potholes and redistribute the gravel. A vehicle coming along the road is an event and we all go out to look at it to see who it could be.  A couple of times over the years, very bewildered tourists in camper-vans have ended up out here when they took a very wrong turn. It is possible that somewhere on the back-roads of Northland, they are still driving around aimlessly, looking for a way out.

There’s a grass airstrip on the farm, which you can see in the photo below beside the road. Yes, you are right.  It’s not quite like the runways at the airport, but small planes can land and take off from there with no problems.  This is where the pilots who spread fertilizer on the fields fly from.  I remember once when I was young, being allowed to go for a ride with one of them.  The pilot took me on an acrobatic ride that was better than any roller-coaster!  He flew straight up so that I was pushed into the seat, and then stalled the plane so we dropped like a stone and I floated.  Only my lap-belt kept me in.  It was fabulous!  I’m sure that he wouldn’t be allowed to do it nowadays, especially with a kid in the plane with him, which is a pity.

Life is very good out here for animals and people alike.  Fresh air, oodles of space to roam in, and views people around the world pay millions to have on their back door-step.  I feel very privileged to have grown up here.

By Lisa Watson

The joy of kites at the Rimini Kite Festival

In April we drove over to Rimini on the East coast of Italy to visit some friends.  We were incredibly lucky to hit town on the weekend that the once a year kite festival was on; and not only that, there was a perfect strong and steady wind blowing off the sea that lifted all the enormous kites high into the sky. Rain showers keep passing over, and the sun umbrellas and lounge chairs were still locked away so we walkers, and many very excited dogs, could enjoy the entire beach.

How do they make their kites fly so well?

Most of the kites were not the traditional diamond-type that I used to make as a kid, but were almost like balloons made in all sorts of fantastical shapes. What makes these crabs, pink dragons, telephones, and caterpillars into  kites is that they fill with air and lift off the ground purely using the force of the wind. My kites never flew as well as these, even in the wind we sometimes get on the farm that is so strong you can lie back in it and not fall over.

It was very difficult to choose which photos to put up as there were so many weird and wonderful kite shapes. The pink dragon above didn’t seem to really want to lift off.  He seemed more interested in keeping his feet on the ground and watching how the others did it.

Kite flying always whisks me back in time

There’s something very soothing about the rustling and swooping noise the kites make when they’re flying. It always takes me back to my childhood: running along as fast as I could with a kite trailing behind me, and the magical feeling I got when it stopped bumping along the ground and suddenly lifted high into the sky. I can understand why people are so passionate about making and flying kites!  At the Rimini festival this year, there were around 200 “kiters” from over 30 different countries that gathered for the long weekend of wind-hustling.  How do they check these kites in on the plane?  Some of them would definitely rate as over-sized luggage!

It’s worth going to Rimini to see the old town too!

Although I am not showing you photos of Rimini’s old town in this post (the kites are just too spectacular!), it is definitely worth tearing yourself away from the beach to go wandering around the old town.  I had no idea that it was so pretty!  It’s easy to spend a day exploring the town, and stopping every now and then for a delicious piadina, a delectable coffee, or a creamy gelato.  I’ll be telling you all about the specialty of Rimini, the piadina, in a post coming your way very soon!

Kites galore!

There was a kite to suit every taste, and every preference that a person could have.  You like squid?  Here they were in quantity, fluttering their tentacles around;

You are more into space (or starfish?)?  Here, were startled-looking stars rotating and whipping around as though they were trying to escape their tethers and take off into space;

Or are you more into ghosts, or even old telephones?  Well, here were the kites for you to admire!

Hats off to the kite masterminds!

In the photo below, you can see the ballast that is needed to keep these giants from flying away. It seems to be a lot of work to set one of these kites up and make it fly.  I can’t even imagine the work that goes into making these huge kites, and getting them to a point that they fly perfectly.  No wonder the kiters want to show off their creations!  I did feel a little sorry for the wife of one of these men (they all seemed to be men, which was another puzzle for me. why do you think that is?).  She was sitting in a deckchair with her Yorkshire terrier on her lap for the whole windy afternoon, while her husband flew a number of these large animals.  I bet that’s what she spends most of her weekends doing.

Almost like being there!

You can get a real feel for how cool the festival was in the video below.  Watch out for the pointy-headed man.  I have so many questions that I’d like to ask him, the first being, “Why?”.

By Lisa Watson

Surprises Everywhere!

The Ligurian coast in Italy is full of surprises!  I don’t know how many times we have zoomed along the motorway on the way to Turin and passed by all its secrets. Recently, we decided it was time to start exploring a bit of this coastline.  We unearthed the beautiful village of Cervo. and thought about buying a rooftop apartment there. We wandered through the stunning ruins of Bussana Vecchia, and admired all the artwork hidden around it.  Now it was time to discover a new village.  We planned our visit carefully by placing a pin in a map without looking (a paper one; not one on the computer), and Noli became the next place on the list to find out about. When we got there we kicked ourselves for not visiting it before now!

A little Noli history

Noli is a small coastal village, not far from the larger port city of Genova.  At the end of the 1100s, it became an independent republic thanks to its large calm bay which allowed it to be a strong naval power.   It managed to fend off its rivals up until the 1700s, when Napoleon stormed in and took it over.   Nowadays, it is a sleepy hamlet where you can see fishermen taking their colourful boats out, just like they have been doing for centuries.

How about a walk to the fortress?

There is a well-preserved medieval fortress on top of the hill overlooking Noli is called Monte Ursino castle.  It was built in the 12th Century by the noble Del Carretto family, in order to control the sea around them, and also the comings and goings on the Roman road below them. According to Tripadvisor, it’s very much worth a visit, but unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to go there before lunch, and were too full of food to climb the hill after lunch, so the castle will have to wait until next time we go. I figure that it’s been sitting there for nearly a thousand years, so it can wait for us for a little bit longer.

We did a double-take when first glimpsing the boat in the photo above. It looks as though someone is incredibly flexible, or has had a horrific accident. Luckily, there were actually no real legs connected to the boots.

The narrow streets of Noli

The facade of Noli, facing the sea is made up of an almost impenetrable wall of buildings.  There are low arches every so often that let you access the maze of narrow paths (called caruggi ) that wind through the village.  Some of the paths are barely large enough to walk through, let alone swing a cat in.  I did some research to find out why the spaces between the houses in Noli are so narrow, but haven’t had much luck.  My guess is that the village was made that way to fortify it from pirates and invading hoards (not that that stopped Napoleon).  If you can’t be more than one abreast, and absolutely can’t lift a sword, I think it would be very difficult to fight and overcome the resident population.

Are you wealthy enough to build a tower?

Noli has towers; quite a few towers, but not as many as it had a few centuries ago, when there were seventy-two of them. Sadly, there are only four left in good condition. These towers were constructed between the 12th and 14th Centuries by rich merchants and nobility as a “mine is bigger than yours” competition to show how wealthy they were, and also for each wealthy family to protect itself from other rival families.  You can see them in other parts of Italy, like San Gimignano in Tuscany, where many of the towers are still standing.

So, if you’re in Liguria and driving along the motorway, do take a slight detour when you see the sign for Noli.  It’s a beautiful village to while away an hour or two.  Make sure you go to the castle and tell me about it!

By Lisa Watson

Whales, Whales Everywhere

As promised when I wrote about laid-back town of Tadoussac, which nestles on the edge of the huge St Lawrence river in Quebec, here’s the lowdown on looking for whales of all kinds in the waters around the town.   Apparently, if you’re lucky enough,  you can just look in any direction towards the river or the Saguenay fjord, and you can find them floating around.  I did try that method, and had luck with it to see lots of Beluga whales, but I’ll tell you about that a bit further down the post.  To see the big guys, we didn’t have time to spend hours gazing out to sea, so we went for a ride in a not too small boat to go and search them out.

To Go Or Not To Go?  That is the question.

When we got to Tadoussac, we weren’t even sure if it would be worth going out.  After all, you could pay all that money and maybe no whales would turn up, though our fears about the lack of whales were allayed a bit when we discovered that you can pretty much guarantee to see whales of all kinds from May to September.  You do have to be aware that it can be foggy at any time of the year there as the water is go incredibly cold, so you may go out on your booked boat tour, only to spend the time trying to find your hand in front of your face.

The tours that leave from the port in the town seemed awfully expensive, especially for a family of four.  We hummed and haahed for a while, then my husband discovered the whale-viewing answer! He found out that if you drive about twenty minutes up the coast to a place called Grandes-Bergeronnes, you can go out with a company called Croisières Essipit for much cheaper. The whale-watching company is owned and operated by the First Nations people (the Innu) from the village of Essipit, just a bit further up the road. Not only that, but you leave the coast from nearer to where the whale action happens, so there is less time spent traveling to see the whales and more time spent actually watching them.  We decided to take an afternoon tour to try to avoid the possibility of morning fog.  As the kind woman on the desk told us, after she had recovered from laughing at us for thinking that the whales are more active in the morning, the whales have to breathe day and night so they are always active.  The time of the day doesn’t matter one bit.  So, now you know, so you won’t look as silly as we did.

Dancing whales and cold, cold water

We donned bulky survival suits, fleece hats, gloves, and life-jackets to go for our trip. The water is a balmy 4 degrees C, even in the middle of Summer, so it’s not something you want to fall into.  If you go, make sure you have some really warm clothing to wear under the waterproof coats and pants.  The temperature if fabulous for the whales and seals, but not so great for humans.  We saw mammals galore:  fin whales (the second largest in the world after the blue whale), minke whales, lots of inquisitive seals, and our absolute favourite, a very agile humpback whale called Tic-Tac-Toe .  Tic-Tac-Toe sacrificed about 20 minutes of her eating time to dance for us.  She flipped her flukes in the air, rolled over and over on top of the water, and as a grand finale, swam along upside-down, slapping her tail on the water. It’s easy to forget the cold when you can watch something like that! The only whale we missed was the blue whale.  Apparently there’s one that comes and goes, but she didn’t happen to be in the St Lawrence when we were there.

A calmer whale-watching jaunt

For a calmer approach that didn’t involve freezing cold water and survival suits, the next day we headed over to the Saguenay Fjord, to see a different species of whale: the white beluga.  The fjord is part of a National Park, which would be worth going to even if there were no whales around.  We hiked out to a viewing platform that stands on the edge of the Baie-Sainte-Marguerite, and with binoculars (make sure you take some with you if you go), were able to watch a pod of Beluga whales pootling around in the fjord.

Use your imagination

Those are the white dots in the bay that you can see below if you look very carefully! Apparently, the pod has recently adopted a stray narwhal (those are the grey ones with the horns that normally live up in the Arctic). Nobody’s quite sure how it got there, but the beluga pod seems quite happy to have it along for the ride.  The belugas came to the fjord during the last Ice Age and then never left, so they’re definitely there for the long haul.

Building dams to the tune of moaning

The water is much warmer in the fjord than out in the Saint Lawrence River, so the kids had hours of fun building dams to try to stop the encroaching tide, and turning large pieces of driftwood into boats; all to the tune of the moaning beluga whales swimming around just off the beach.

By Lisa Watson

On the banks of the Saint Lawrence river

We had come to the end of the road; or so it seemed.  After driving alongside the enormous St Lawrence river for a few hours on a smooth, two-lane highway filled with large trucks and the biggest camper-vans I have ever seen,  the road had just stopped at the edge of a bay.  The fog that had been shrouding our surroundings suddenly cleared and, lo and behold, a car ferry puttered into view. These free ferries efficiently shuttle vehicles of all sizes, 24 hours a day/7 days a week, back and forth across the Saguenay fjord that cuts the highway in two.  On the other side lies the town Tadoussac, and the rest of the highway that continues on for nearly 1000 kilometres all the way to the open Atlantic Ocean.  The road beckoned to us once we’d reached the other side, but we did not heed its call, as we were destined to stay in the small town of Tadoussac for the next few nights.  Honestly, with a name like that, it’s worth staying there just so you can let the word “Tadoussac” roll off your tongue, Lucky for us, it is more than a one-horse town with nothing but a petrol station to its name; far more, in fact. It is actually very pretty, with good restaurants, and far-reaching coastal views that make you think about dropping your bags and never leaving.

The history of Tadoussac; lost in the mists of time

The history of Tadoussac is fraught with a little violence, as most areas with a long history are prone to have. When the French arrived in the 1500’s, the First Nations people were already using the area as a base for hunting seals.  The French established a fur trading post in the area that much later would become the town, and also brokered an alliance with the local people.  Over the next seventy-five years or so, the Innu population dropped drastically for reasons that don’t seem to be very well documented.  I found speculations about epidemics brought by the Europeans, mention of wars with no details as to who was fighting whom, and just the idea that they vanished because the European settlers monopolized the waters and hunting in the area.  I guess, at this point, we will never know for sure.

Why everyone wanted to live in Tadoussac

The English and French squabbled over the area for a while, as Tadoussac made a great base for fishing and whale-hunting, plus the bay is calm and deep which made it easy to moor large ships close to the coast. England took control for a while, then in the 1600’s, the French gained control of the area again after signing a treaty with the English, and founded a town there.  In the 1700’s they built the Chapelle-Sainte-Anne that is still standing today, started logging and farming, and settled in for the long haul.  Quebec was then handed over to the English again in the 1700’s after the Seven Year War.  At that point, the majority of the population were french-speaking and that is how it has stayed until the present day. The area is officially bilingual, but lilting québéçois is definitely the preferred language.

When the whales come

Nowadays, the most violent thing you may experience is being elbowed out of the way while someone tries to get the best seat on a whale-watching boat. More about the whale-watching later. Just so you know, I have a trick for you so that if you go there, you can pay less and see more (don’t tell everyone else!).  That secret will be coming up in my next post. For now, I’ll just tell you that because of the St Lawrence river being so deep and wide, and because its water is so bitterly cold, whales of all kinds come in droves.  They gulp tonnes of plankton, breed, and generally have a good time in these protected waters; much to the delight of everyone who wants to get up close and personal with them.

How to choose a hotel in Tadoussac

The main part of town is on one street.  On it, you have all the cafes and restaurants you need, plus a well-stocked supermarket. The impressive Hotel Tadoussac, built in the 1940’s, that you can see in the photo below is also on the main street.  It must be nice to stay in one of their rooms at the front of the hotel that looks directly out across the St Lawrence river. We contented ourselves with looking at the facade of the hotel instead as we had decided on a much more exciting option for our choice of place to stay.  The decision was mainly based on the fact that we wanted to light a fire outside to make s’mores, which is a great criteria for deciding where to sleep for a few nights.

It’s all about the s’mores

We roughed it just outside of Tadoussac, in a two-bedroom bungalow in a campground called La Domaine des Dunes. Well, I guess “roughing it” is a big word.  It was the glamping kind of roughing it with our own kitchen, terrace with Adirondack chairs to lounge on while drinking aperitifs, and our very own fire-pit.  Incidentally, until I visited Canada, I never actually knew what Adirondack chairs were.  As far as my knowledge went, they were mysterious seats that people sit on in books I’ve read.  Now I know that they are really comfortable outdoor wooden chairs that you don’t want to get out of.  I know I could have looked it up, but it’s far more fun to travel to Canada and find out. Apparently, they were made by a guy in the Adirondack Mountains, which are in the north-east of the U.S.A., because he didn’t have any garden furniture and wanted some.  Little did he know that they would multiply, migrate all over Canada, and end up sitting at all the best viewpoints in the National Parks and in people’s gardens.

Roughing it in style

They even had washers and dryers for doing laundry, which we badly needed.  A word to the wise: the washer is underneath and the dryer is on top.  The single money-slot to make them both go is in the middle.  Careful which button you press or you may find yourself paying to wash your laundry twice; and once the machine starts, you can’t make it stop. Let’s just call that anecdotal evidence. Oh, and get a small box of laundry powder from the local supermarket rather than from the reception.  It’s MUCH cheaper.

The campground is called the Domaine des Dunes because it sits right on the edge of a park with a long beach backed by huge dunes. You can walk down a trail in the forest to get to the beach, or lope straight down the dune, which is infinitely more fun. It has the kind of steepness that can cause your legs to start pinwheeling as though you’re in a Roadrunner cartoon.  Slogging back up is a little less fun, but there’s always the zigzagging trail hidden in the trees on the north side of the beach to take you back to the top.  Don’t bother bringing your swimsuit here though.  The water is so cold that it immediately numbs your feet when you step in ankle-deep.  As I wrote above, this is the kind of water that is a paradise for whales and seals to swim around in, but not so alluring for people to jump into.

By Lisa Watson

Where to eat in the village of Bussana Vecchia

Remember that I promised you a couple of weeks ago that I’d tell you where to eat once you’ve explore the wonderful village of Bussana Vecchia on the Ligurian Coast of Italy ? Well, here I finally am to divulge all the eating secrets of this tiny village after a bit of a delay. School holidays have just started here in France and suddenly my kids have pressing needs to be driven here and there for absolutely unmissable life-changing meetings with indispensable friends, so I’ve been a little busy.  Teenager-hood has definitely raised its head in our household. I always find it so interesting how everything that happens in a teenager’s life suddenly becomes so overwhelmingly make-or-break in their eyes.  Everything that happens has a dramatic, theatrical tint to it.  Though, that is also what makes teenagers so fantastic when they decide to put this passion into a cause or interest.  They’re so passionate about everything that when they decide to do something, nothing will stop them (of course, this can also be a bad trait, depending on what they are determined to do!).

Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent as usual, so it’s time to get back to eating out in Bussana Vecchia.

Fabulous cappuccino

There are two wonderful, complementary places to eat when you visit this tiny village.  Luckily, you can try both places, as one is a cafe and the other, a restaurant.  As you walk up into the village, you’ll bump into an outdoor cafe shaded by large umbrellas called the Piazzetta Golosa. We stopped here for a fabulous cappuccino, and drank it seated on the terrace surrounded by greenery.  The cars can’t really drive up past the cafe, so it is incredibly calm and quiet. The cakes and savory food are all home-made and all looked very enticing, but as it was just before lunch, I didn’t end up getting anything.  I will next time I go there though as it all looked absolutely delicious! 

The couple who run the cafe are very friendly.  When I went to the bar to order the coffee, a local and the owner pulled me into a conversation about a car that had got stuck on the train tracks down near San Remo the day before (in case you are worried, nobody got hurt).  I felt like a local too, to be included in the gossip of the day!

Discovering hidden art everywhere

After wandering around the village to gaze at the semi-restored buildings and the artwork that hides around every corner, we started to get a bit peckish, so thought we would head down to the coast for lunch.  As we walked back to the car, we passed the restaurant called La Casaccia that you can see below.  On the way up, we had thought that it was closed as they were repainting it, which is why there is newspaper and plastic stuck all over the signs and the lamps.  that’s not actually the permanent decoration.  The waitress was wiping down the outside tables ready to open the restaurant, so we decided to try it out.  We were sure glad we did!

The not-to-be-missed restaurant in Bussana Vecchia

For a start, you sit at trestle tables that have the view you can see in the photo below, looking down over the coast and the Mediterranean Sea.  We decided that even if that food was bad, the view would be completely worth it.  In fact, the food was great, but I’ll tell you about that in a minute.  If the weather isn’t so good, they have a lovely indoor part of the restaurant that would have been a pleasure to sit in too, though there is no view from the inside, it is very cosy.  I forgot to take a photo of it, but you can see photos on Tripadvisor of the artistically decorated interior. The waitress spoke Italian (of course), French, and English very well, and who knows, she probably speaks other languages as well.  She immediately came to apologize that the charcoal bbq that much of the food is cooked on wasn’t ready yet, but brought us some freshly fried chickpea-flour sticks, which more than made up for the wait.

The sadness of discovering a much-loved restaurant has closed down

One of the choices on the menu were special lamb skewers that you can see grilling on the funny shaped grill in the photo below. These skewers are actually a specialty from the Abruzzo  region of Italy.  As there was a relatively intense migration of people from Abruzzo to Liguria many years ago, you can still get these skewers in many restaurants near Sanremo, like the one I wrote about here called Gabry. Now, I just looked up Gabry as I couldn’t remember the name and nearly wept over my keyboard as I’ve just discovered that this family-run restaurant has closed down after 30 years!  Just as well I discovered this restaurant so that I can get my rostelle fix when I need it. In Abruzzo these skewers made of “hogget” meat are called arrosticini.  In Liguria, the name somehow became rostelle, but the skewers remain the same. For the record, a hogget is a 1 – 2 year old sheep, or as my farming father calls them “a two-tooth” (as that’s how many teeth they have at that age).

Have a digestive after your meal

You can, of course, get other delicious things cooked on the charcoal grill, like baked potatoes with a creamy fresh cheese in them.  I didn’t get to the desserts as we we so full from all the rest of the food we scoffed, but I hear that they are good to.  After a free digestif of mirto, a high-powered liqueur made from myrtle berries collected on the slopes of hills in Sardenia and Corsica, and a chat with the very friendly chef and owner, we reluctantly turned down the offer of a second glass of mirto in an act of self-preservation, knowing that at least one of us had to drive down the narrow, windy road back to the coast.

By Lisa Watson

Discover the beauty of Liguria

I had a very pleasant surprise a couple of weekends ago when I discovered this tiny village on the Ligurian coast in Italy. We chose to go there arbitrarily as it was at the halfway point between our house and where the friend we were going to meet was staying, plus there was a restaurant on the beach that sounded good.  Our group was made up of five adults and seven kids, so any restaurant on the beach that leaves the adults to eat and sip wine as long as they like, while the kids run around outside is a solid reason to make the choice.  The restaurant, called Ristorante Restano really did have excellent food and served the children first, which earns a five star Tripadvisor review in my books, or it would if I could ever get around to writing a review there.

How not to get growled at after jumping in the sea

After a few hours of  the adults eating and chatting and the kids secretly trying to dry their shoes after jumping in the sea with them on, so they wouldn’t get told off, we waddled out to explore the village of Cervo.  It’s true that the beach is not much to write home about.  It is stony, though it suits those who want to sunbathe without getting sand in their sandwiches.  The village perched on the side of the hill rising up from the beach is beautiful! Even on the cloudy day we were there, the colours of the buildings were bright.

Cervo is built on a very steep slope, so the climb up to the main square is quite puff-worthy, especially after eating a huge plateful of fried calamari.

Puffing up the hill is worth the effort

When we got to the main square, we discovered this terrace (and I assume the apartment that goes with it) for sale.  Can’t you just imagine sitting there on a warm Summer’s evening, sipping a Spritz and gazing out at the blue Mediterranean Sea?  The only problem with it is that everyone standing in the square can look over your shoulder at the view you are seeing too, so maybe we won’t buy it just yet.

Once we managed turn our backs on the stunning sea view, we turned around and came face to face with  the elaborate baroque-style church of St John the Baptist.  This imposing church was built during the 17th and 18th Centuries.  If you think it already has an abundance of decoration and ornate carvings on its facade, you just wait until you step into its cool interior.

A Baroque extravaganza

The inside of the church was definitely worth a visit.  The frescoes all over the walls and gilded statues are in perfect condition. If there’s a mass on, it’s worth waiting outside until it’s finished so that you can have a look at the inside of the church. While you’re waiting you can grab an ice-cream from the gelataria in the square. Well, you can do that even if you’re not waiting.  You earned it after that trudge up the hill (tell yourself that anyway).

After a little more gazing out to sea, we wandered around Cervo while the kids played Hide and Seek in the narrow alleys of the village.  Surprisingly, we managed to come out with the seven kids we started with, even though there are so many places to hide.  Luckily none of them are the stubborn kind of hide and seekers who have the patience to stay hidden for hours.

The colourful walls of Cervo

You never know what you’ll find around each corner in the village or what colour the next building will be. I can’t even imagine how much heavy lifting it must have taken to get the fishing boat in the photo below up the hill through the narrow winding streets.  I imagine that they don’t take it out to sea that often, if ever.

Taking the long way home

After a stroll around the village, we set off for a walk through the countryside on a loop that took us through olive groves and under towering pine trees.  Remember that, even if the olives are ripe, don’t pick them.  For a start, they belong to someone, and anyway, you can’t eat them straight off the tree.  They have to go through a long process of soaking in brine until they can actually be nibbled on.  I would love to know who came up with the process.  It’s not exactly intuitive to soak olives in salty water of a certain concentration for a month or so and change the solution frequently.  I can understand leaving a cheese somewhere damp for a while by accident, and then finding out that the cheese tastes better with mould, but inventing the process making olives edible surprises me!

In spite of the cloudy day, it was still nice to go down to the beach and throw stones in the calm water once we got back there.  Getting a stone to splash in the sea, or trying to skip it across the water, is fun no matter how old you are. So, if you find yourself on the coast of Liguria in Italy, do go to Cervo.  It’s absolutely worth a visit!

You can also read about Cervo and four other Ligurian villages that are worth a visit on Ishita’s wonderful blog all about her love of Italy called Italophilia

By Lisa Watson

Eating out in Alba

Over Christmas we had a reunion with some old friends in Alba, a beautiful town in the middle of the Langhe wine growing region just below Turin in Italy. With all our kids safely parked with one set of very accommodating grandparents, we headed off to Alba and to a restaurant right in the middle of town called the Osteria dell’Arco.  It was a little tricky to find as it is hidden in a courtyard away from the main street.  If you get to go, look for an unassuming door in the colourful facade below.  Let’s hope that they don’t change the colour of the building! It was very difficult to choose what to eat there as everything looked so enticing.  The food we ordered was absolutely fantastic.  I can personally recommend the artichoke gratin with Robiola cream and the  Fonduta tortelli with Jerusalem artichoke cream (yes, I have a thing for melted cheese). 

It’s all about Slow Food in the Langhe

The restaurant is part of the Slow Food movement that was born in the Langhe region.  Its founder, Carlo Petrini, began the organization with the help of a group of activists to promote fresh, locally-grown food .  The movement has gained momentum and spread all around the world.  The University of  Gastronomic Sciences is not far from Alba in a small town called Bra.  You can go there to learn pretty much everything about ethical production, marketing and distribution of food and wine, so you can afterwards go out and make the world a better place to live in.  I’m all for that!  If you’re not quite ready to go (back) to University, you can simply choose to eat at a restaurant which displays the sign of a red snail on its door and menu.  Then you know you’re in the right place to eat a fantastic meal and that all the ingredients have been locally sourced from small producers using agricultural methods that do not harm the environment.

Nothing like a stroll after a big lunch

After a filling lunch, we waddled down the long, cobblestone pedestrian street looking at shops crammed with food and wine; not that we really needed to eat or drink anything else.  Actually, I do suggest that you eat something before going walking there otherwise you’ll buy far more than you should.

It’s truffle season in the late Fall, so there were truffles for sale everywhere: starting from the black ones at relatively affordable prices, to the white truffles that you need to check your bank balance before handing over your bank-card.

Truffle capital of Italy

The town of Alba is world-renown for its white truffles.  Truffles must be eaten fresh, so if you want to get the true truffle taste, you need to come to the main place in the world where they grow.  Alba hosts a truffle fair every year around October/November where you can eat EVERYTHING truffle. The truffles you see below under the glass case are the highly prestigious white ones and they have prices to match their rareness. The white truffles cannot be farmed, appear only for about two months a year, specifically in Piemonte, Italy, and  truffle dogs have to be especially trained to find them. Global warming is causing the temperatures to rise enough so that there are less and less of the white truffles every year, so go and try one while you still can! Another interesting fact I discovered is that female pigs used to be used to sniff out truffles as the smell is the same as that of a testosterone-oozing male pig, but the problem was that they often gobbled the truffles or broke them up before their owners could get to them.  When you have a fungus that can be worth thousands of dollars per ounce, there’s no way you want your pig to eat them!

A little tipple to wash down those truffles

If you are not so much into expensive fungus, you can always head into one of the many enotecas and taste a little wine.  Again, you’re in the right part of the world as the Langhe area makes some of the best wines in Italy.  You may have heard the names of some of them already: Barolo, Barbaresco, Nebbiolo, Barbera d’Alba, Dolcetto.  Often these wines are named after the beautiful villages that they are grown around.  There’s something very special about being able to, for example, go to the tiny village of Barolo and drink a Barolo wine. Both Barolo and Barbaresco are made with nebbiolo grapes, but as they are grown in slightly different soils in different parts of the Langhe region, and are stored for different periods of time, they taste different.  You can also buy Nebbiolo wines which are wines grown with the same grapes as the first two, but are grown outside the designated growing areas for Barolo and Barbaresco wines.

Go nuts for the local nuts

Another special product that comes from the Langhe area is hazelnuts.  If you buy some, check that they have the official IGP label (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) certifying that they are from Piedmont.  The Tonda Gentile variety are grown in the Langhe area, and I can attest after eating bucket-loads of them over the years, that they are exceptionally good.

If you’re not into restaurants, truffles, hazelnuts, or wine, never fear!  Just taking a stroll down the long pedestrian street in Alba and window-shopping is enough to make you glad that you came to this gem of a town!  The Langhe, with its perched villages and its steep vine-clad hills is the lesser-known twin of Tuscany: just as beautiful, but far less crowded!

If you are in The Langhe area on a clear day, try to make it to Diano d’Alba around sunset.  This village is perched on a high hill, and from near the church at the top, The Langhe wine region stretches away below you in every direction. The line you can see on the horizon in the photo below are the snow-capped Italian Alps that form the border between France and Italy.

A perfect end to a perfect day!

By Lisa Watson

Segesta temple in Sicily is not to be missed!

One of the most stunning buildings I saw when we visited the Western part of Sicily last year (yes, this post has been a long time in coming!) was this ancient Doric temple ruin near the small town of Calatafimi-Segesta, near the slopes of Mt Barbaro.  I remember learning about Greek and Roman column architecture way back in my misty school past, but couldn’t quite remember what “doric” meant.  For those of you who, like me, have forgotten or never knew in the first place, I looked it up for us and it means the architectural style came from Western and mainland Greece. The columns are grooved or smooth and have no fancy bits carved at the top them like the Ionic and Corinthian orders which originated in different areas of Greece.   So, now you can sleep better at night knowing that.

A little history about the area

The temple stands on a hill that gives you sweeping views over a large green valley. I can completely understand why they built the temple here! So who built it?  Well, apparently, it was built by some mythical-sounding people called the Elymians.  From the name, they sound like a people who come from a fantasy book where they fought dragons and built the temple to magically defend their villages from ogres. The real history is probably much less dramatic.  These people lived in Sicily during the Iron Age.  It is said that they fought with Greek colonists, who eventually convinced them that living in the Greek culture was a good idea, so the town of Segesta became mixed.

Why was the Segesta temple built?

A Greek architect convinced everyone that it would be a good idea to build the temple, so they did in the 5th Century BC.  It was never finished completely and the town of Segesta was razed to the ground in the 4th Century BC by the far-from-home East Germanic Vandals.  The Romans, of course, were everywhere in Europe at that time, so they were also heavily involved in the history of Segesta.  History seems to get pretty complicated around that time, with many different people roaring back and forth across Sicily, attacking each other and making life pretty miserable for anyone who just wanted to live peacefully and raise their crops.

What to look at when you visit the temple

The temple sits just up the hill from the ticket office and visitor centre.  Already, as you trudge up the hill, you have fantastic views down into the valley.  Once you get to the top, it’s difficult to know what to look at first: the building itself or the far-reaching views.  Luckily, you have time to do both!

The views get even more spectacular when you walk up Mt Barbaro on the other side of the visitor centre to the amphitheatre built around the end of the 4th Century BC by the Greeks and restored by the Romans in the 3rd Century AC.  There is a little bus that will take you up there, but if you can walk up, it’s worth it as there are many ruins to explore on your way.

Don’t forget to visit the amphitheatre too

Once you puff your way to the top of the hill,  you first walk through the ruins of an Islamic mosque and necropolis that is said to have been built around the 12 Century AC before you get to the theatre.  It is truly amazing that in this small area, you can clearly see the layers of thousands of years of history.  It becomes easy to imagine the daily lives of people who walked 1000 years ago on the same stones as you are walking on right now.

During the Summer you can go to the amphitheatre and watch shows and concerts.  The views are so amazing over the Gulf of Castellammare, I think it would be difficult to concentrate on the stage! The only disappointment I had here was that I bought a one of a kind ceramic bowl painted with designs particular to the Western part of Sicily in the gift-shop at Segesta.  I carefully carried it home in my hand-luggage, stressing all the time that it would break.  The following week, I was walking through the local village market in France where I live, and lo-and-behold, I found exactly the same bowl…..for less money!  Arrrgghh!  Globalization strikes again!

By Lisa Watson