We left our workaway in Moiano and spent the next few weeks wandering around Tuscany. We started with a couple of days exploring Chianti. Beautiful rolling hills, covered with vineyards and olive groves. Plenty of great food too. Fresh pasta and a bottle of wine makes for pretty gourmet camping. We also had our first taste of truffles at a restaurant in a tiny village among the vineyards.
After getting our wine fill we headed to Florence for a dose of city living and culture. We stayed in a campground in the city, up on a hill next to Piazza Michelangelo. It had a great view over the city and was particularly good at sunset. Like all tourists to Florence, we spent our time wandering around the amazing art galleries. The Uffizi was great, with such a vast collection. D'Academia was all about seeing David. Climbing the big red dome of the Duomo was also worth it. Walking between the structure of the dome's two walls and getting a close up view of the frescos was great. A view of Florence below.
After all the bustling and lines in Florence, it was time to head to the beach and take it easy. We headed straight out to near Livorno and found a nice little site right on a typical Med beach (below). All rocks and crystal clear yet still quite fresh water. After a few nights we crawled around to another beach a few hours up the road. Complete opposite with coastal pine forests leading up to the dunes on the beach. The exception is, that this is Italy, and it had a long stretch of private beaches, covered in sun lounges and umbrellas. Mostly completely empty, except on the weekend. We also squeezed in a quick trip to Pisa to see the Tower. There's not much else there.
We then headed to Cinque Terre National Park. This is where the mountains start coming down to the sea to create a stunning landscape. The area is famous for the 5 villages from Riomaggiore (below) to Monterosso. This area was great, and there is a 12km coastal walk linking them all together through the mountains, vineyards and olives. But there is also much more to the area, and many more stunning towns along the coast. We stayed near Deiva Marina which had a nice sandy beach.
We then went around to the Italian Riviera near the French border. A very scenic place with big white mountains coming down to the beach.
After nearly two weeks crawling along the coast, we headed straight up through the alps, taking two days to drive up to Geneva.
This is where we boarded a plane and headed to Dahab in Egypt for another week of beach combing, but more particularly diving. We did 10 dives and saw some great stuff. Plenty of corals, but not too many big fish. Anthias galore. Lionfish on every dive. Stone fish and scorpion fish. Nudibranchs. Popcorn shrimp. Spanish Dancer. Good to be blowing bubbles again. Found a great felafel place where we had lunch everyday for 50p, and plenty of BBQ meats. Really nice people too.
We are now back in France for a 2 week workaway in the French Alps. More on that later.
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