the first day in Italy...

I know, it's a little late... but wanted to share pictures... Mary and I decided that having a car was the best option for us... we could go where ever we wanted... the first day we landed in Milan... trying to get out of the city and onto the highway was a difficult feat... after an hour of missed turned and round abouts, we decided to have lunch... It was my first Italian pizza (and may I say the first of many!)... my memory of the pizza was much different... but as we made our way around italy I found that no pizza was alike... this was our cute car (and more spacious than we expected)


Our first stop was along the Italian Riveria (west coast)... our first look at the water:

and Genoa - we were surprised to see the palm trees but discovered they are everywhere!


We drove farther down the coast to the town of Santa Margarita... we loved this town, though it was very touristy and about 5 kilometers from Portofino, so also expensive... this was our first view of the town...

then we had to drive down a narrow windy road to the bottom (should I say that most roads in Italy were windy - crowded and a bit scary!) Here are some shots of the town...


there seemed to be a castle in every village, and if not a castle then a grand church...

then we drove to Portofino, and saw this gorgeous view:

the next day we tried to go to Cinque Terre (pronounced Sink-a-Tera)... the roads were windy and narrow... we met up with a bus and the road wasn't wide enough for the both of us... Mary tried to back up but it was uphill and curvey... but obviously we were able to pass each other... one of the things about Italian drivers - they feel they personally own the road... and the motorcycles and scooters are worse than the cars! if you are at an intersection with two lanes, it was very common for them to create 3 or 4 lanes... YIKES!!! and the motorbikes passed on your left and on your right...

our next stop was Pisa... I'll tell you more about that and tuscany in next post...