Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Back to San Remo

Hey everyone

So the last few days have been pretty wicked really. Yesterday Max and I went up into the Alpes Maritimes. They're the mountains behind the house in Nice. If you looked at the photos from on top off the cliff, basically we went miles back into the mountains behind that.

We went up the opposite side of the mountain this time and we ended up on top of the hill outside the ruins of this really cool old castle. I don't know any of the history behind it sorry. Here are a few photos to check out. The rest are all on Facebook if you're interested.








We left the castle to trek up tot he top of the valley. We hadn't really looked at the maps that carefully since I assumed Max knew where he was going. We eventually got to where we had intended; it just took an hour and a half longer. We basically went about 10km further in to the mountains than we planned, but in doing this we actually found the remains of a Cessna that had crash landed into the mountain in 1970. I thought it looked like the ruins of an old barn from a distance so we went to check it out and when we got closer we realised that holy shit... it's a freakin' plane! We only found out we went so far into the mountains when one of Max's parents' friends came over last night and he said how far in it was and was totally surprised that we'd actually managed to find it!

We looked around it for a bit and as is a Pocock family tradition (apparently), we took of a piece as a souvenir. Trusty Leatherman... glad I decided to take it with me. What we have is the controls for the landing gear and flaps, although we really aren't sure. 



Today Max, Zane, Bryan and I went into San Remo again. All around Italy there are old train lines which have been sealed over and turned into bike tracks. We were looking at this last Saturday when we were there for the market and decided to come back today to ride it. So we left St Jeannet at 8am for the usual €3 breakfast in San Remo - Two cups of espresso and a Cornetto Vuoto (Italian croissant). Yes. That costs €3.

So. The bike track. As you'd expect from an old train line it's almost entirely flat which is pretty easy going. None of these hills you get back in Wellington! We raced down the 20km track in just over an hour but we took our time going back to San Remo. We stopped at all the little towns along the way to have a look and to grab lunch, etc. 



The town at the end of the line is called San Lorenzo. Max and I headed into a little trinket shop for the start of our quest for things that go BANG! We spent a grand total of €4 on 10 Mighty Cannons and 60 Tom Thumbs - both illegal in NZ. There wasn't too much else going on here so we headed back to the next town along the route. This was Santo Stefano al Mare. We had a little break here and wandered through the town. I love all these little Riviera towns with the tight alleyways and cobbled roads. It's pretty cool really. We sat on the waterfront here with a beer and some chips. When we bought the beer we though it was €1.80 per can.. Turns out it was actually for two cans. It's just ridiculous that a can of Heineken costs less than a Euro.





The next town we arrived at was Riva Ligure. We got pizzas for lunch here - as you do when you're in Italy - and sat down by the beach to eat them. We discussed how hard it would be to start up a decent pizza shop like this back in New Zealand and we seriously just can't figure out why we don't have food like this! Same goes for the cafe we were in this morning for breakfast. So if anyone's willing to bankroll a small business we've got a great idea...

Oh yeah... So the little side quest for fireworks... Stop two was made here. We headed into a shop equivalent of a $2 shop and bought ourselves some more Tom Thumbs and some giant 10-shot like things.

Last stop before San Remo was Arma di Taggia. This was purely for more fireworks and another beer. We stopped off at the supermarket and bought some more illegal-in-New Zealand fireworks... Buzzy bees. Yeah. This is going to be a good NYE. We sat on one of the benches off the side of the cycle path and basically just looked out to the Mediterranean. A pretty sweet day overall and definitely the best since I've been here. The weather was treating us pretty nicely too for winter - tipping the scale at 16 degrees today.

That's me done for today. We're down into Nice tomorrow for some shopping I think. I'll be back in a few days with an update for you all. Have an awesome New Year's everyone! If you feel like a chat at any time flick me a text on my 027 number since it doesn't cost me anything to receive them and I'll do my best to get onto Skype or Facebook.


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