Doug & Jodie

This last week had been the warmest I have ever experienced in London and it has been fabulous!! It is amazing how everyone comes out of the woodwork when it is like this. During the week Doug and I made the most of the weather and ate out on the south Bank near Festival Hall, Friday night I had cocktails with Yumi and Laura at B@1 while Doug was out with his workmates – everyone is frantic to enjoy it because it is inevitable that the weather is going to shift!

Saturday Doug and I caught the train out to West London and Kew Gardens, the village surrounding was so quaint and the houses of the rich and famous just gorgeous. Kew Gardens themselves were very pretty, lots of hot houses and old manor houses and manicured lawns and tiny lakes with swans – such a lovely day in yet another of London’s fantastic Royal Parks, undoubtedly London’s best feature.

Sunday we headed up to North London to Highgate on a mission to visit Highgate Cemetery. 150 years ago London commissioned 6 cemeteries to be privately built as the churchyards couldn’t keep up with the death rate. Highgate Cemetery became the most fashionable cemetery to be buried in. One German Jew (Julieus Beer) who was very wealthy and successful was never accepted into London social circles because his wealth was a result of his commercial business and not by birth – so his tomb is at the highest point of the cemetery ‘looking down’ on London and the roof is lined with gold, at the time he paid £5000 for it – equivalent to 3 million today! The whole place was so eerie but beautiful, it is overrun with wildflowers, vines and trees not manicured at all just mysterious and romantic in a way. It was definitely a place worth visiting!

Given today was the hottest day yet, we headed up Highgate Hill to a pub for lunch in the beer garden – a feast of steak and Pimms and beer later we headed home to our little flat on the Thames to prepare for another week of life in London – this week: Rose my cousin will be visiting, I am going out to dinner with the girls from work on Thursday then Saturday we’re heading up to Cambridgeshire to stay with Glory’s friend Katie who is taking us to a ‘posh’ race day!

Last week was a hectic one for me (Jodie). After getting up at 4am on Wednesday for a 7am flight to Warsaw for a client meeting, enjoying a bottle of wine and some traditional Polish food in the old town square post- 4 hr meeting, I arrived home at 11pm that night! Then rose again at 6am the next day for our flight to Pisa and our long weekend away in Italy – my all time favourite country!!

Arriving at Pisa airport we were greeted with sunshine and warm breezes – neither common on a British summer day… we boarded the train at Pisa airport and literally went around a bend 150m long and arrived at Pisa Centrale station where we had to change trains – we could have walked faster! After a scenic trip through the country and some helpful advice from a local we changed trains at La Spezia for our last train to Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre is translated as ‘Five Lands’. Along the Italian Riveria which lies between Genoa and La Spezia lies 5 tiny villages which fit snugly into the cliff side and are framed by terraces of crops, mostly vineyards, and front onto the gorgeous Mediterranean ocean. If you arrive from the south like we did, the villages in order are Riomaggiore, Manorola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare. We stayed at Vernazza which we had been told was the most picturesque. The little train took us through endless tunnels cut through the mountains then directly alongside the coastline. We arrived in Vernazza and found a pizzeria on the harbour where we soaked up the sun and London became a distant memory. Then we donned our backpack and headed up the steep winding steps then through the terraces and along part of the coastal walk between villages before we found our B&B high up on the cliff top!!! Over the 4 days we certainly walked a lot of stairs but the benefit was being completely away from all the tourists and when lying in our old Italian stone house all you could hear was the ocean below and the crickets chirping. The place was run by a crazy cat lady who loved to chat to us over breakfast about her love of the resident cats and Australian movie stars!

After a kip the first afternoon we headed to the village and found a great restaurant way up near the turret overlooking the ocean and the village – here we enjoyed some great wine and booked ourselves in for dinner the following night. Later we strolled/hiked home full of wine and Galati! After another great sleep we set off the next day along the coast walk which links all 5 villages, in total this is supposed to take 5.5 hours to walk from the first to last village but given Doug’s recent surgery we opted just to walk from Vernazza to Monterosso – little did we know this was the most challenging part of the walk. The views were absolutely spectacular and the weather perfect! In Monterosso we had a fantastic seafood lunch and more gelati before catching the train home. After another nap we headed back down the mountain to our dinner reservation and some more fabulous food and wine overlooking the Med and the colourful village. The most striking thing about these coastal villages are the colours, all the buildings are painted different bright colours and the contrast in so pretty.

The next day we set out by train to the second village Manorola then walked to Corniglia which was relatively flat until we arrived at the base of the cliffs and had to climb 300 or so steps. Here we enjoyed some more great food in the tiny main square then caught the train home for yet another well earned nap. Back in Vernazza we found a lovely flat rock (in the absence of sand) and enjoyed the sun then a quick dip in the ocean. That night we headed into town and stood in the harbour listening to live music being played on a small stage then found a little restaurant tucked in a back alley before gelati dessert sitting on the water’s edge.

The next morning we caught the train back to Pisa and walked through town, across the river and to the Leaning Tower of Pisa!! We took the traditional tacky photo of us holding up the tower and then quickly ducked out of the square to escape the ridiculous crowds. We really are now on the hunt for the least touristy destinations but they are few and far between these days, perhaps our next trip to the Sth of France and a visit with family friends in a remote village will be relatively tourist free. After our last fill of Italian food and plans for a detox when we returned to London we headed back home.