CONTENTS
Lerici
On a mid-May morning, the Hertz office by Milano Centrale was fresh out of Fiat Pandas and offered me the smaller and sportier Abarth with a scorpion logo instead. The lady, who remembered me by now, laughed and assured me that at 1.93m (6’4) I could squeeze into it. When I picked up my wife Erin’s classmate Andrea, whom I had never met, he was impressed and told me all of its specs excitedly, as he was an engineer, and Italians love fast cars. He promised me that it was much more powerful than the Panda, and the car proved it as we streaked southward on the A1. Our destination was the coast of Liguria, the Italian Riviera, to attend a gala at their university sailing weekend.
We turned right just before Parma, famous for the hams, and headed southwest through the Apennines, the mountains running like a spine down the boot of Italy. With the Alps to keep me busy, I had never spent any time in them, but wanted to come back. The road narrowed as it wound up and then down the cliffs into picturesque Lerici. It was far from high season but still crowded and we circled the town twice to find parking on the extreme outskirts.
With time to kill before our hotels were ready, Andrea and I ate an excellent but expensive lunch at a place with avant-garde plate design and sushi-sized portions. We would have preferred a trattoria. When we parted ways, I walked a block toward the waterfront and saw a nook with no inside seating, just a bunch of metal steamers and a few tables out front. For a third of the price they gave me a huge plate of fresh fish and a piece of Ligurian focaccia – one of the region’s famous food exports, second only to pesto made from basil and pine nuts.
I found Erin and her classmates on the docks, dressed in beach clothes, sunburned and seasick from a sailing trip too early on a hungover Saturday morning. They did the only thing one can in such circumstances: push on with wine at lunch. The table baked in the afternoon sun. Above us joyful pink and yellow houses adorned the cliffs, anchored by a stern castle on the promontory which protects the harbor. It was obvious why Romantic poet Percy Shelley made Lerici his home, then tragically made it famous by drowning in the bay.
While her classmates were condemned to preparing for the black tie banquet in the boat cabins they were sharing for the weekend, I rescued Erin and drove the narrow coast road to a hotel in Tellaro with spectacular views of the sea. After the late lunch we had no time but to dress and drive back.
Always eager to save a minute, Google Maps sent us down a shortcut: a farm road so narrow it could have been a foot path. After crossing a tiny bridge the buildings on both sides choked the “street” until we measured the space between the walls and the Abarth’s mirrors in millimeters. The gate at the dead end was clearly not the villa, so we had no choice but to reverse the whole harrowing alley. Erin, who likes to be fashionable but hates to be late, called the villa for directions, without success. Google Maps refused to offer other routes.
With a general idea of its location above the bay, we tried the main coast road, passing the house where Shelley lived, and then missing the entrance twice before seeing a sign for Golf Club Marigola and a guy loitering at the gate. He confirmed he was security and we were in the right place. We hiked up the narrow stairs and emerged into a garden spread over the headlands with huge hedgerows and big spherical boxwoods, the yellow villa itself surrounded by orange and palm trees, the scenic viewpoints framed by tall cypresses that could have come from Van Gogh’s Starry Night. But the full moon admitted few stars as it rose over the half-moon harbor and the castle on the opposite point. It was an astonishing place, and a moment that made me grateful to be in Italy.
We had missed most of the aperitivo in the garden. I excused myself from a long lecture on the Genoese shipbuilding convention to move our car from a tow zone to the villa’s parking. Erin’s colleagues wore sunglasses during the dinner to hide the seasickness that they couldn’t shake. We skipped the dance party and drove down to the promenade. Still hungry, we walked up to a little panino stand in our formal wear. The proprietor asked if we were famous as we watched him slice the perfectly marbled prosciutto meticulously for long minutes. They care about food here in a way that we can’t conceive in the U.S., but it would serve us to learn. Among the principles are slow, not fast, and quality, not quantity. The piazza was still lively but it was too late to linger. “Portare via,” I said, and he packed the sandwiches to go.
Carrara
The hotel served breakfast overlooking the sea. It was time to head home, but I had a few plans while we were in the neighborhood. From Tellaro we detoured south down the coast to Tuscany. In forty minutes we found ourselves in Carrara, famous for the marble with which Michelangelo carved David, and which now graces countertops worldwide. You can see the quarries from the roads, entire mountainsides shaved off, exposing a bright white interior, like someone took a big spoonful of a Baked Alaska. We passed through pitch black tunnels nearly as narrow as where we got stuck in Lerici. Venturing out of the car, we heard huge rocks clatter down the hillsides. It was far away, but as a climber, it always puts me on high alert.
La Spezia
We skipped a formal tour and returned to Liguria, past Lerici to La Spezia, the main port at the top of its eponymous gulf. The impossibility of parking made it feel larger than its 90,000 people. We circled the waterfront, each time smelling fried seafood and seeing a huge line on the docks. Once parked we walked back to Dai Pescatori, meaning “by fishermen.” I never wait in lines but this one seemed worth it. Inside you choose from the fresh catch in the vitrines: fried calamari, shrimp, and sardines, sautéed seafood of every sort, and of course, pasta. It’s dirt cheap and top notch. We ate at the tables on the docks, and considered a second round, but decided to depart for Cinque Terre.
Cinque Terre
Most of Cinque Terre is inaccessible by car, so we took the train from La Spezia to Manarola. Well before we arrived I could sense it was a mistake. Upon exiting, the platform was more crowded than a rock concert. We inched to the staircase and then filed out into the town, one of five, as the name Cinque Terre (Five Lands), suggests. Sure, it was every bit as pretty as promised, with multi-colored houses perched on cliffs above dazzling blue water. But in fifty years it has evolved from sleepy fishing village to semi-Disney. Each year 2 million people visit these five towns with a total population of 3500 (of which Manarola has only 350). I overheard some people saying they planned to spend four or five days. We got a photo and a good but overpriced lemon granita and were gone in an hour.
Monaco
The day grew late, and we had two options for returning to Milan: retrace my route from yesterday toward Parma, a dull drive through the flatlands of the Po Valley; or, continue along the coast to Genoa, possibly with a stop in Portofino, the yacht capital of the Riviera. As I looked at the map of the coast a crazy idea overtook me. “It’s the same distance to Monaco as Milan. We’ve got the car until tomorrow, and the formal wear in in the trunk. We could go to the Casino.” I said it in a way that I could retract it as a joke. We would return late as it was, and Erin had class at 8AM. She replied instantly, “I love that idea. I’m down.” This is why we are together, and why we moved here. The spirit of adventure and improvisation. We love that in Europe distances are small by American standards, and there is beauty to chase everywhere.
We found that beauty easily as we drove the entire Riviera, looking at the Ligurian sea beneath steep cliffs for hour after hour. We had no time for Genoa, once an empire and now a UNESCO World Heritage site worth its own trip. We skipped Portofino, too. Instead, sunset saw me tying a bow tie in a truck stop parking lot in France. Neither of us had brought a passport, but there was no check to enter the tiny (less than 1 square mile) Principality of Monaco. The magnificent full moon rose again over the sea. As we descended the steep hills down to Monte Carlo I asked my co-pilot to find the road and even the exact tornante of Princess Grace’s accident, but she didn’t share my fascination, and was perhaps unnerved by my quoting the first lines of J.G. Ballard’s Crash from memory. My assurances that the Abarth had superb cornering couldn’t sell this add-on to our already crazy mission. When we learned the spot was in the mountains on the far side of town, I conceded.
We parked on the main drag by the harbor where they were setting up the stands for the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix to take place in a few weeks. We stared out above the yachts at the moon and the Prince’s Palace, and then turned back toward the casino. The façade facing the sea is called Salle Garnier after its architect; it is home to the Monte Carlo opera, and bears a strong resemblance to his Palais Garnier in Paris. The entrance to the casino itself is on the city side, on Place du Casino. Like its Las Vegas cousins, the casino is a huge shopping and entertainment complex, not just for gambling. The entire modern town sprang up around it in the late 19th Century. The square out front is as flashy as you would expect, with Ferraris lined up under the big clocktowers.
We entered the lobby, marble with painted ceilings, gilt columns and chandeliers. I always feel out of place in casinos since I never gamble more than $100, but I’ve never felt sillier than walking in that door wearing a tuxedo for no other reason than the obvious absurdity of doing so. It turns out that management was quite familiar with our type, and charges $18 to enter the place as a tourist. At least we easily passed the “smart attire” requirement posted at the front. It was all but empty on a Sunday night. There were some table games in the rooms, but you won’t see James Bond at baccarat since all the serious business takes place in the private salons. We ordered drinks and rested for a few minutes. Finally, I tried my hand at video blackjack and won big: $25. I could barely keep a straight face redeeming such a paltry ticket at the payout box, but I had netted $7 over my entrance and broken even, if you count the bottle of Perrier and parking.
We laughed as we wandered the town, which is like Madison Avenue or Milan’s Montenapoleone run wild, and returned to the garage to face the long road home. I was too lazy to take off the tuxedo, and got some strange looks later while pumping gas. The highway was empty. The Abarth was fast. An espresso and The Chemical Brothers made the kilometers pass quickly. We dropped the keys in the Hertz lockbox and were home at 4AM, last call at bars in NYC.
Useful Links
- Restaurants
- La Luna Nel Pozzo, Lerici. Cute space and location, small portions but excellent quality.
- Dal Perro, Lerici. Absolutely top notch seafood stand near the harbor.
- La Magnolia, Lerici. A little sandwich stand in the main piazza, open late.
- Dai Pescatori, dockside seafood in La Spezia.
- Hotels
- Miramare Tellaro, Tellaro. With spectacular sea views.
- Places
- Villa Marigola
- Marble Basin of Carrara (UNESCO site)
- Cinque Terre (UNESCO site)
- Le Casino, Monte Carlo.
- Other
- JG Ballard, Crash, 1973. Not for the faint of heart, and controversial to this day. Also check out the excellent (and almost equally controversial) David Cronenberg film adaptation (1996) starring James Spader and Holly Hunter with a great performance by Elias Koteas as Vaughan.
Map
Map courtesy of Google Maps.
Reboot in italy 
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