The promised gargantuan travel post has been hovering over my head, constantly reminding me of my inability to cram 21 days of adventure into one cohesive post. I have finally reached the conclusion that the best–the only–way to approach posting about my trip is to do it in sections. I’ll feel much better about tackling just one location at a time (and I’m skipping the French Riviera because I sort of did a mini post on that already), and you’ll feel much better knowing you won’t incur an early case of arthritis trying to scroll down through all the photos and itty bitty text that would surely be involved with an exhaustive post about the whole thing.
So here we are, Trip Report #1: Cinque Terre. Perched on seaside cliffs in Western Italy, Cinque Terre is a collection of five tiny fishing villages. The water is brilliant blue, the vegetation a startlingly green, and each and every village is chock full of charm. I’m a small town girl to begin with so it’s no surprise that I fell completely and utterly in love with the area. Contributing to my infatuation with Cinque Terre was the fact that there were dogs everywhere. Dogs are allowed on the trains in Italy (and maybe other parts of Europe as well?), so many of the European tourists had their dogs with them. And, like Scotland, the dogs are allowed everywhere, places we American’s wouldn’t dream of taking our dogs, knowing full well we’d be scorned for endangering health codes, places like restaurants and bars. It’s heaven! And nobody has their dog on a leash, which doesn’t matter because by golly, those dogs stay right by their owners at all times. I am totally fascinated by this phenomena, why are American dogs on average so poorly behaved compared to their European counterparts? (I am most certainly including my dogs in the poorly-behaved-American-dog category; just this morning they opened the front door themselves and went on a squirrel hunt through the neighborhood).
I am going to keep scenic photos to a minimum (this is, after all, primarily a dog blog), but if you are wanting to see more, they will soon be posted on my Flickr page.
Favorites for last:
Trip Report #1: done and done.
