Europe Holga

Photos taken with a Holga TIM half frame camera. Sometimes I forget to take the second shot. Photos taken in Turkey, Italy and Barcelona.

Cinque Terre & the Côte d’Azur

Our final stop in Italy was the Cinque Terre, five tiny towns on the Italian Riviera that are separated by large cliffs. We stayed at the fourth town called Vernazza with our friends Sophie and Jay who had flown in from London for a long weekend. Cinque Terre involved lots of wine, a little exercise, pasta, a thunderstorm and catch ups with old friends.

Despite a slight red wine hangover, we spent our Saturday morning walking the hiking track between Vernazza and Montorosso. For someone who is ridiculously unfit it was quite a challenge but it made the frozen vodka limonatas at the end of the walk all the more rewarding. We spent the rest of the day drinking wine beside the Mediterranean Sea and partying at the local beach bar with Corona margaritas (I’m still don’t understand how a margarita with a Corona stuck in it tastes good but it just does).

Our next destination was Nice in the south of France. Nice is a pretty city with excellent food markets selling an array of fresh produce and of course fromage! We spent a lot of our time relaxing at Villefranche-sur-Mer, a beautiful beach a few stops by train from Nice. We also visited the town of Menton so Ryan could make the pilgrimage to the grave of the founder of rugby, William Webb Ellis.

I stumbled across the store Lou Froumai while on the hunt for the local specialty of mussels cooked in white wine and cream. Lou Froumai is the most beautiful fromagerie I have ever seen, with a big open cabinet of cheese. I chose a small goats cheese to sample that was produced by a farmer who milks his 40 goats by hand to produce small quantities of cheese. Amazing!

Napoli

Naples is chaotic, crazy and slightly lawless. And I love it! We weren’t sure about what to expect with Naples as many people had told us that is was a bit dodgy, very dirty, and that they often left after one day. But I think Naples may be one of the most misunderstood cities in Europe and everyone should visit!

It helps when you have Stefano to act as a local tour guide. I had met Stefano while working at the food store King & Godfree in Melbourne and he had encouraged us to make the trip down from Rome to visit him. Stefano was able to show us the around by car, as well as on foot, which gave us a great perspective of the city from the 14th century Castel Sant’Elmo that has views out to the volcano Mt Vesuvius. The city has some of the oldest buildings and churches in Europe and exploring these, as well as the maze of Greek passageways under the city, was amazing.

For those who don’t have their own local tour guide for Naples, I highly recommend staying at the hostel Giovanni’s Home. Giovanni is truly passionate about his city and will go out of his way to ensure you enjoy your visit. The hostel is set in a large apartment in the city’s old quarter (the walls beneath the hostel date back to the 6th century BC when the Greeks first established the city) and is a great base to explore Naples. Upon arrival, Giovanni will most likely offer you some lunch (we had freshly baked pasta cake) and will give you a brief history of the area while making up a map of the best way to see the sights and where to get the best pizza.

The food in Naples is phenomenal and by far the best we had in Italy. It was also surpisingly inexpensive. Stefano took us to one of their favourite restaurants where we ate buffalo mozzarella and cherry tomato pizza – which only set us back €4. The other amazing local speciality is frittatina, which is deep-fried fritter of leftover pasta, buffalo mozzarella and potato. So for €1 you can achieve an early but happy death by deep-fried goodness. Ryan fell in love with both frittatina and croquettes and insisted on eating them for breakfast. As well as the food was also the partying, with nights spent bar-hopping and drinking in the Piazza Bellini with Stefano and his friends.

We only had two nights in Naples, which in hindsight was not long enough and we were having so much fun exploring the city that we didn’t make it out to Pompeii or Herculaneum. A good excuse to visit again!