Wes & Marlow Travel Blog

Home for the past week

This is the view from our room in the vineyards of la Morra. The village of la morra is perched on the hill in the distance about 300 meters away. A nice short walk.

Marlow picked a small bunch of grapes from the vine for our breakfast. They were hanging from the vine just outside our room. Last night, after we arrived at about 8:30 pm, we had a dinner including a shaving of a huge white truffle over a plain tagliatelle noodle. It arrived at the table on a scale and they weigh it before and after the shaving. The entire room was filled with the truffle scent. We had a couple of (half) bottles of wine made from the grapes grown in these hills.

Last year when we visited these same hills the vines were full of fruit hanging below. This year we are one week later and the weather has been cooler so the barbaresco grapes have been picked. But the Nebbiolo vines are being harvested this week.

Ciao ! Andiamo!

Wes and Marlow

Sunday, October 13, 2013 Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

In preparation for our five week trip to Italy, France, England and Michigan, I packed weekly. Rehearsal packing. We will carry all our stuff onboard: one wheeled suitcase apiece and a second smaller bag, in my case, a viola. Will I use the viola? Who knows. Does Linus use his security blanket? No, but it has to always be there.

We and our bags made our way to the Tom Bradley International Terminal (T-Bit) at LAX. It has recently reopened after expansion and renovation. It is quite a production. After passing through security you enter a gleaming white atrium, four stories tall. An elevator column rises the full length from floor to ceiling. It’s four sides consist of television screen material. On the screens, moving images, custom made, transform the elevator shaft into droplets of water that drip from ropes in slo-mo, a forty foot tall pile of teetering antique luggage. Then it is a bell tower with windows from which lively people wave pull aside the curtains and wave.

We are seated on a third floor terrace in the United Business Class Lounge. The elevator tower movies are amusing, but in another direction is a twenty five foot tall movie screen broken into irregular sized

rectangles. Playing on that kooky assemblage of screens is a twenty foot tall parrot flapping it’s colorful plumage in slow motion, then a Flamenco dancer a-twirl in a red dress with arms akimbo, then a surfer riding a wave and keystone cops doing their old-timed jerky walk. Down below, on the main floor are the “coming soon” eateries. High end. Petrossian, Chaya, Border Grill. Bravo to the new terminal.

Time to go to the plane. We are excited to cross paths with the great maestro, Gustavo Dudamel. I noticed him, from behind, by his hair, that wavy shiny black parted in the middle mop. I am impressed by his humility, traveling alone, with no one to carry his bags or to drive him to the gate. He appears very approachable, though no one approaches.

And we are on the plane. In the nose. In row four. In huge laz-e-boy recliners. Pampered. And ready for the ten hours till touchdown in Frankfurt, where we’ll hop a plane to Turin (Torino), where we’ll drive a rented car to La Morra on a hilltop in The Langhe.

See you there…….

Marlow and Wes, on the road again.

Sunday, October 13, 2013
Los Angeles, California

Arrivederci Roma!

We spent the final three days of our visit with Lily in Rome. Visiting fountains, ancient temples, churches, neighborhoods, gelato venders and museums. We certainly packed a lot into those days as you can see ….

Corridor in our crowded train to Rome.
Fortunately we had a private compartment in first class!

Making a wish at the Tevi Fountain.

The Turtle Fountain on the edge of the Jewish Ghetto.

Our guide to the Roman Forum.

Judiaca fried artichoke at milk restaurant in Jewish Ghetto.

Aperitif hour in Piazza Navona.

Our last dinner in Rome. Rose petals on Lily’s pasta.

Marlow and I received the blue menu and Lily the pink for la donna.

and la donna’s menu contained calorie counts of each dish in place of the price!

In Nana’s Footsteps Again — Sistine Chapel

Another treasured family heirloom is the Travel Diary written and annotated by Nana on her first visit to Europe in 1925. She traveled with her family and visited England, Scotland, France, Switzerland and Italy. The 80 pages contain her hand written account of each day’s events as well as small sketches and drawings of sights along the way.

One entry in the diary is of great significance to each of us in the extended Hough family. Appended to Nana’s description of one of her days in Rome when she visited the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel is a casual reference to an unexpected meeting.

Cass Hough was a student along with Nana at the University of Michigan at the time of this summer vacation. And we imagine that sparks ignited in the Sistine Chapel that day.

So off we went on a Monday afternoon as the temperature in Rome was well into the 90s to visit the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica. In the Sistine Chapel we could easily imagine Nana and Cass gazing up at the magnificent ceiling and at the panels on the walls, oblivious to all the other visitors who must also have been doing the same thing. And then a bump and a surprise!

While we probably were not as lucky in locating the exact spot where this event took place as we were in Portofino, visiting the Chapel was the perfect ending to a wonderful visit together.

Our Home on the Coast

During our week in the Cinque Terre we were very lucky to have stayed in a home with incredible views. The house clung to the steep cliffs hanging over the primary “harbor” of the village of Manarola. The house had three living levels. The house is entered from the top level which consisted of the kitchen, dining area, living room with a couch and a patio. The next level down contained a bathroom and two guest bedrooms. This is where Marlow and I stayed. A door to the outside stairway is used to reach the last level and the master suite with a large bedroom and bath where lily stayed. This level also has a long terrace with a table and a laundry room which also had a semi outdoor shower that we all enjoyed using after our swims in the Sea.

Here are a few photos of the house.

Marlow gazing at the coastline from the porch just outside Lily’s room.

Dining table with a view!

Living area

Stairway down to Lily’s level

Lily’s terrace

Lily’s room

Patio on upper level

Sun deck on the bottom level

The boat that ferries passengers among the five villages stopped just below the house.

To locate our house start at the far right pink house and look to the left. It is the lowest house on that rock surface.

Hiking the trails of Cinque Terre

Italy’s Cinque Terre is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and also a national park covering both the land and waters of this coastal area. Hiking trails run throughout the park in a well organized and marked network maintained by the national park. Many of the trails have existed since Roman times. The trails can be found at different levels of the steep hillsides. Some run close to the coast and even over hang the Ligurean Sea in places. Other trails run high above the sea affording huge views of the sea and the villages below. The terrain can be easy in places where the trails are paved with flat stones and accompanied by handrails. But most of the trails are very narrow without handrails and one must step very carefully. There are also 100’s of steps mostly formed out of stones and large rocks.

The trails run through carefully terraced olive groves and vineyards. It is hard to imagine how it is possible to tend and harvest since the land is very steep.

The trails link the villages so it is possible to hike from one to another. We chose to hike on two trails. The first hiking day was a five kilometer hike from Manarola north to the next village of Corniglia. Our second hike, on a separate day, was from Corniglia north to its neighbor Vernazza. Each hike took us about two hours to complete.

At many points along the way it is hard to imagine you are really seeing such incredible beauty. Here are a few photos from the two hikes.

Portofino

One of the favorite artworks displayed in our home is a watercolor of the Portofino harbor painted by my Grandmother on a visit to Italy in the 1940’s.

Portofino, watercolor by Margaret R. Hough 1940’s

I found the painting still enclosed in Nana’s sketchpad and indeed the penciled outline of an additional sailboat or two in the harbor indicates that this was still a work in progress. Each time I see this painting I imagine Nana sitting comfortably at her easel gazing at the incredible view as she takes time to record this memory in watercolor.

Portofino lies just up the coast from where we are in the Cinque Terre. So one of the excursions planned for our visit with Lily was a visit to Portofino with hopes that we could locate the exact place her Great Grandmother sat while painting this view.

Cappuccino break in Santa Margherita-Ligure
before departure for Portofino

Although direct boat service from Manarola to Portofino is offered on certain days, the boat did not operate on the day we intended to travel so we took the train from Manrola to Santa Margherita-Ligure where we would be able to board a passenger boat for the 15 minute ride into Portofino harbor.

From the train station into the center of Santa Margherita-Ligure is a short walk. We arrived just before Noon so we took the opportunity to enjoy a cappuccino in the main square. There were so many interesting take away options that we decided to make an impromptu picnic lunch. Liguria is famous for its focaccia and also for a crepe made from olive oil and chickpea flour. We found a bakery that made both! And sat in a waterfront park next to a prominent fountain crowned with an imposing statue of Christopher Columbus and enjoyed our lunch.

Arrival in Portofino

The boat trip into Portofino’s harbor takes only 15 minutes. As we approached Portofino there were many huge yachts moored in the harbor with uniformed staff members undertaking various tasks. One of the tasks would be to transport the yachts occupants into town for shopping or dining. Google tells us that the yacht owners included Dolce and Gabbana and a Russian billionaire. Although there wasn’t room at the dock for their massive yachts, there was for ours so we landed in the center of the town and immediately took off on our quest to locate the perch where Nana sat to paint her watercolor.

Getting close

Lily first remarked that it was obvious the buildings had changed color from the uniform white of Nana’s painting. The colors of Portofino today are classic dark reds, yellows, light greens and ivory we associate with the Mediterranean.

We headed away from the harbor towards footpaths up into the opposite hills. One stone path led from the harbor to Castel Brown – a local landmark. The path led past large private homes with patios and gardens that would have provided a similar view. But the stone walls were too tall to provide an easy view of the harbor. Although there were several breaks in the wall where we could look down towards the harbor, the perspective didn’t seem quite right. Plus, the walkway and walls appeared to pre-date the 1940’s so we were pretty sure Nana didn’t choose that exact spot. At one point Marlow actually knocked on a very imposing door of the villa with a grand patio overlooking the harbor. The staff of the villa finally answered his knocking but assured us we were in the wrong place!

Not quite the exact perspective ….. keep climbing

After traversing up and down the walkway Lily spotted another slightly higher pathway above the path we were on. So we walked back down towards the harbor and took this alternate route back up into the hills opposite. This path led to a church and its adjacent cemetery. At various points on the cemetery grounds it was possible to look down to the harbor.

Hmm, perhaps Nana found a spot in the cemetery to create her painting.

The cemetery has expanded since Nana must have visited the area. It has grown into higher and higher points on the hill all connected by stairs and ladders.

And it is still expanding. At the very top there were still crypts in various stages of completion. Peering around one set of crypts we saw what seemed to be a good candidate but there was no terra cotta roof visible in the lower left corner of the view.

Just missing the prominent terra cotta roof.

But when peering around another set of crypts, and standing on an adjacent bench to look over the trees below, we were able to find what looks to be the exact place Nana sat. We imagine that before the cemetery expanded up into the hills, the various plateaus were paved observation areas where Nana would have been able to sit in the shade and gaze down at the harbor.

Eureka! We located Nana’s perch!

Having completed our quest we headed back towards the port with great satisfaction and feeling quite entitled to some gelato!

Lily has joined us!

Lily arrived at Pisa Airport about 7AM (Italy time) on Monday, June 10. On our way out of Pisa we visited the Torre Pendant (leaning tower) and were able to climb to the top of the tower. On the way back to the Cinque Terre (also known as 5 Terre, CT and Five Lands) we stopped for lunch in Lucca. Upon arriving to our home for the week in Manarola, we immediately went for a swim in the sea to cool down.

On Tuesday we hiked high above the villages of the Cinque Terre, on a footpath that probably dates from Roman times, from Manarola to the next village to the north, Corniglia. The footpath took us through vineyards and gardens and was filled with incredible views.

Today is Wednesday and we are about to take a two-hour boat trip up the coast to Portofino.