Leaving Beautiful Italy

Our last few days in Italy were spent delaying the inevitable. After 6 glorious weeks in this incredible country, we were definitely not ready to leave. If the weather was not significantly deteriorating (being November), we may have just found a way to stay. Italy made us swoon, but not only that…..it’s the number one country we had visited that made us feel completely at home and more relaxed than we had ever felt before. We loved the food (of course), the people, the landscape, the architecture, the character…..actually, it is pretty hard to think of anything about Italy that we didn’t fall in love with. Ok, so we had a little hiccup with our car being broken into, but thankfully we had nothing stolen and we were on our way to get that fixed. Besides, the glad wrap was doing a perfect job of performing a substitute window role.

Our last few days in the country were spent driving from Cinque Terre along the coast to France. We spent a night in Ravallo, where we sought ideas from locals about where we would be blown away by our last meal in Italy. The recommendation certainly didn’t disappoint and we gorged ourselves a little silly despite not having the appetite to match.
 
We also had the opportunity to wander around the stunning village of Portofino with its famous postcard layout of pastel houses in a row, lining the water’s edge. It was here that we saw the extent of the storm devastation along the coastline, with a huge amount of debris floating on the water and tired ducks that had obviously been injured trying to wade through it to get to dry land. I could tell they were looking for food and I was gutted to not have any bread or access to it with most stores being closed.
 
The atmosphere of the Italian coast was definitely dying down, with many stores and tourist oriented businesses closed for the season. We did enjoy the fact that there were very few tourists around, but we could also tell why…..it was really starting to get chilly now. As we drove across the Italian/French border the following day, I couldn’t help but shed a few tears because we were saying goodbye to probably the best time of our lives thus far. I suspect we will have an attachment to Italy for the remainder.

Portofino