Campsites,Italy # 3of13

In Portofino our camping spot was in the parking lot behind a several-story apartment building. The next morning, as we were preparing to leave, I watched a policeman walk slowly across the parking lot and approach the camper. With a smile, and a wig-wag of his finger the policeman let us know camping was a no-no in Portofino. A few years later we found a new building had been built in our “campsite,” we had to move on.

As we journeyed up the miles of switch-back road, enjoying the beautiful view of the coastline and the towns of the Cinque Terre, we stopped to take some pictures. We then saw what looked like RVs parked on a little point of land, sticking out into the Ligurian Sea, on the northern edge of Monterosso. So up and up we went, then down and down and around we went, and sure enough there were a dozen RVs obeying Italy’s “traffic hints and suggestions,” parked right under Monterosso’s “No Camping” sign. So we joined them.

One summer the campsites we found near the beach in Carrara, were double-crowded and triple-priced, and didn’t look inviting. On the edge of the city of Sarzana we saw that “Restaurant Bambi” had an empty parking lot. The family was in the backyard relaxing by a small inflatable swimming pool, so with their permission we spent the night. Ah, the convenience of the RV.

We drove exactly 17 km north from Pisa and there was a campground on Viale Giacomo Puccini, in the very nice town of Torre del Lago Puccini, on the shore of Lake Massaciuccoli. All this right in front of the home where Giacomo Puccini wrote “La Boheme,” “Tosca” and “Madame Butterfly.” A “Pensione” next door was named “Butterfly.”

Our first stay in Florence, in 1970, was at Campeggio Comunale, on Viale Michelangiolo, with a fabulous overview of Florence. The cost was $3 for two nights, for the RV and four of us (daughter Linda and her friend Pupa), and while the facilities were not very clean, the view was magnificent. By our forth visit, in 1995 (twenty-five years, minus one month since our first visit), the cost had climbed to about $18 for one night, for the RV and two people. The manager asked what had changed the most. We said that in 1970 we wanted a fire hose to clean the facilities, and this year they are clean and in excellent condition.