Italy Trip Sept 2025 - Part 1 Levanto and Cinque Terre

You might wonder why we have not been to Italy in the Moho before. In fact it is about 28 years since we holidayed in Italy, plus a night there en route to the ferry for Greece in 2000, which was hardly recent either! There are two things we found offputting. First, pre Moho we liked to picnic at lunchtime - saves a lot of money and it's generally fun. However we found so few places in Italy where you could park up to even take a photo of a view, let alone have a picnic. One day I remember it being about 5pm before we found anywhere that we could pull off the road at all. We cut our holiday short and went back to France, where scenic picnic spots abound. The other reason I'll tell you about a bit further down in this post.

On our way we stopped for a couple of nights at our favourite campsite near Le Lavandou, for a visit to the huge market the next morning and the beach in the afternoon. I managed to get into the sea despite it being a bit cool, I just took my time, and was so happy once I had taken the plunge. I feel like we missed out in the previous September when the water had been just too cold.

En route to Italy we had a lunch stop off the motorway which just happened to be above Monte Carlo! I spent a lot of time with my binoculars having a good sticky beak at the fancy yachts and posh apartment blocks.  Below is looking to the left of the town centre.

And this is very zoomed in of a part of the marina, where the fancy boats and yachts moor. I love looking at posh boats in marinas and try to imagine what it would be like to be able to afford to holiday in such a way! You can see some nice roof gardens in this photo too if you click to open it up.

Once we arrived at our campsite at Levanto we were pitched above a dry river bed. I was looking at it when suddenly I heard some rustling and thought it was dogs coming out, but no, it was a group of wild boar! There was just time to call Keith and grab a mobile photo before they disappeared off - in the direction of the town! Wish I had had my zoom camera handy. There are actually four in this photo but you should be able to see the two on the gravel bed, especially if you open up the image.

We had a wander around Levanto, a good base for visiting the Cinque Terre villages by train or boat, which is what we did the following day. I loved this building covered in Trompe l'Oeil decorations. Only the windows and shutters are real.

Interestingly decorated church!

The beach, looking in both directions.

Below, further up the beach.

Now this is the the other reason we were put off by Italy. A vast majority of the beach space everywhere is private, with only a tiny area of public beach (not always easy to find). Beach clubs are everywhere. On our previous holiday in the 90s we drove through coastal towns where we couldn't even see the sea because the beach clubs blocked the view!

I see it hasn't changed. Fine if you want to spend a whole day at the beach and you fancy a sun lounger and umbrella, with a handy bar and restaurant, changing rooms and showers - and are willing to pay for it. But imagine that if you are a family of 5 on a two week holiday. Bloody expensive. Or people like us who just want to go to the beach for a paddle, or maybe to swim and sunbathe for an hour or so. The public beaches are usually not the cleanest either. I just thank my lucky stars that it is not like this in France or Spain! Now go back and look at that beach in Provence at the beginning of this post. [Rant over 😀] 

The following day we set off to explore the Cinque Terre, which are five small villages largely inaccessible by car (well you can, but only by a very wiggly small road high up in the hills, goodness knows what that is like in a moho!). For tourists, there is a modern train line which makes travel to these villages quick and easy. You can also take small ferries from one village to another, which we did too. 

We decided to visit three of the villages, Vernazza, Manarola and Riomaggiore. The only one we really liked (and which was really scenic) of the three was Manarola.

First stop was Vernazza. Fairly small, we felt there was not a lot to see so we wandered around briefly then took a ferry to the next stop!

Of course there are tourists galore and they ruin all your photos! 😀

From Monte Carlo to Levanto.

The next village will be in the next post.

Spain Trip May 2025 - Part 14 Eastern Alpujarras and Moraira, Valencia

And so it was time to head north in the direction of home, though we had a long way still to go. At the other end of the Alpujarras range, it is much more arid than the relatively lush western end. We drove for ages past lots of pretty yellow shrubs, which I was itching to know what they were. It took a while before we could find anywhere to pull off the road to have a look.

In the photo below are two kinds of broom - the shrub that is flowering is Genista umbellata, and the taller green shrub is Retama sphaerocarpa, which I shared in an earlier post. Here I think it had finished flowering.

 Genista umbellata, below and on the bank.

Another yellow flowered shrub is this Anthyllis cytisoides, not a broom although at first glance it looks very similar. They are both part of the Fabaceae family though.

On the way home there is a place that we have stayed at twice called Javea, which has two campsites within walking distance of the town and beach, AND has a British supermarket 😀, plus several Indian restaurants (not surprisingly, it's full of British expats) but both campsites there were full. So we tried a small town nearby called Moraira where we were able to get into the campsite, which was walking distance from the town. And at the bottom of the hill from the site - there was an Indian restaurant!! You can guess where we ate that night.

We had a no drive day the next day as there were several days of driving home still to come. On this day we took it easy and walked into the town to explore in the afternoon. The campsite was up a suburban road with pretty gardens full of Mediterranean plants, which I enjoyed immensely! Below are three different kinds of Hibiscus.

Bougainvillea looking stunning! I would love to live somewhere frost free and full of plants like these.

View to the town and away from the town below.

I have never seen orange Bougainvillea before!

This small fortress is Castillo de Moraira, built in the 18th century as defence against pirate raids.

Near the Castillo was this strange sculpture!

The water in the marina was lovely and clear and there were three different kinds of fish swimming around.

This is our journey back from Orgiva, where we stayed close to Granada. After Moraira, we had a final night near to Tarragona before returning home.

The only pain was that the British supermarket at Javea was closed because it was a Sunday. Never mind we thought, as there was a small British mini-market in Moraira, and it was open Sunday mornings. However, the town parking is also the parking for the beach, and it was completely full! There was no chance of parking anywhere in a moho to get our shopping which was a shame.

And that is the end of our Spanish trip 2025! Apart from missing seeing Ronda, AGAIN, it was a brilliant trip with a lot of fabulous scenery, architecture and history, and interesting wildflowers, though sorely lacking in butterflies or even insects in general. I don't know what it is about Spain and the lack of insects as I have noticed this before, particularly in the south. 😕

STOP PRESS We just had several days of lovely weather!! It was even up to 18C yesterday and I went for a walk and saw my first butterfly. I've been pottering in the garden and tidying up my pots on the patio. It felt SOOOO good. Today is back to normal of course and rain due again tomorrow! 

Spain Trip May 2025 - Part 13 Nasrid Palaces at the Alhambra, Granada

The last hour before closing at 8pm was spent visiting the Nasrid Palaces, a group of several palaces, although during the visit it was impossible to know which was which as they were not marked. It explains why there are different decorative features from room to room - though one thing they all share is that they are incredibly ornate. The palaces were built in the 13th and 14th centuries by the Nasrid dynasty, the last muslim dynasty in Spain, as a symbol of their power and wealth.

To see these palaces you must book a time slot well in advance of the day you want to visit the Alhambra. I booked about two weeks in advance and could only get the 7pm slot, but of course when you are on a touring holiday you can't always be sure where you are going to be, and when, which is why I didn't book earlier.

You start off in the Mexuar, which served as the entrance wing for the Comares Palace. The Mexuar pictures are the ones on the right; the left one and the one of the wooden ceiling below that are in the Comares Palace. The Mexuar has rather low ceilings compared to the other rooms we went through.

There are several courtyards, all of which have fountains or pools. This is the Courtyard of the Gilded Room and this wall is known as the Comares Facade, one of the most heavily decorated walls at the Alhambra.

  On the left is the Court of the Myrtles, a part of the Comares Palace.

This style of three dimensional carved stucco wall and ceiling decoration is known as Muqarnas, and is very typical of Islamic architecture. I think it's fabulous and I particularly like the blue colour here!

The stucco work above with tiled floor and lower wall is common in these palaces.

You end up getting a stiff neck looking at these amazing rooms!

The top picture below is the Hall of the Ambassadors, where the throne was and where official receptions took place.

It's worth opening up this picture to read about the restoration work.

The Court of the Lions is a palace but as a tourist, you just wander from room to room not knowing which palace you are in. It's only when you come out into a courtyard like this that you can discover which palace it is (from online information).

The 'lions' in the Court of the Lions. To me, they look more like dogs! The building bottom right is after we exited the palaces and it's impossible to know if it is the exterior of one of them or one of the more recent buildings.

These photos were on display which show restoration work that was carried out in the 1920s.

More beautiful buildings and gardens after we came out of the palaces.

As it was close to site closing time we were being shooed out by staff members which annoyed me, as I wanted to take photos! Which I did. And then we headed off back to the entrance area to leave, only to find it was blocked off! There were still a number of people wandering around but all the staff seemed to have disappeared by now. We (and a group of other people) tried to leave from another exit only to find that one was locked too! We ended up wandering around for a while wondering what on earth was going on, though thankfully eventually someone found a small exit into a side street off the main complex. You would think they would have signs pointing towards the exit, wouldn't you?!

It was around 9pm by the time we got back to the campsite and it had been a long day, but a really worthwhile one. The Alhambra is certainly a place to remember and I would encourage anyone going to this part of Spain to visit it!