After seeing all the ancient villages in France, let’s move on to their close neighbor, Italy! How wonderful, in just 2 hours train you find yourself on the land of ITALY.

Ventimiglia has an overrated friday market, but their cheese and ham was already worth it.

The store owner might look fierce here, but he was actually really nice! He kept urging that I eat more of his cheese and gave me a discount 🙂 The reggiano was really good especially when it goes with the parma ham ❤ (I forgot how many pieces I “tried”)

Then we were done here. Moving on to another random destination, with the sweetest name – Dolceacqua, even though I know not Italian, I could make out that it means “sweet(it can mean fresh too) water” 🙂 Now, you might think you have seen all of the Lord-of-the-Ring-villages, but THIS! This blew my mind away. This is the place with the least tourists amongst all other old villages I have been to. People actually still live here!

The weather was flawless. The clouds has finally decided to cooperate with us and the sun worked seamlessly with the river to create the spotless mirror under the bridges.

On a side note, this has got to be the sunniest day which I forgot to put on sunscreen -,-

If I were alone, I doubt that I would have the courage to walk under…

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mightly spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

Then we saw this old lady, stumbling her way up the steep slope, resting every once in awhile. It made me sad to see how she was dragging herself while we were skipping along so effortlessly. How great to be young was my first thought, but my second was, what if I become old and weak? Then I realized there is no doubt that one day I WILL become old. The least I can do is make myself healthy so as to prolong the days of traveling and eating whatever I want 😥 Time is ridiculously ruthless.

 

This angry cat suddenly disrupted my thoughts with its meowing. Well little tiger, what are you starring at?

As we hiked up the village, we came across a choice, the 5 mins walk and the 45 mins walk. Guess which one we took? Well to the left it is 🙂

 

Indeed to see great views, one must climb the hills.

Despite of the inappropriate shoes, the heavy cheese and ham in our bags and our way too warm clothing, we made it there!

 

This is exactly the scene that Monet saw and painted in 1884. Unbelievable how some things can last hundreds of years. When the world changes, this picturesque village just seem to remain as it has always been. As if nothing sad has ever happened, and no one ever grew old or die young.

As we hiked down, all restaurants were closed and I started feeling dizzy either because of the heat, the lack of food or the daunting thoughts of growing old. It probably was the lack of food because we only had gelato all morning… (CREMA gelato, whatever that is, was the best one I have ever had and so cheap 3.8 euros for 3 scoops ❤ Can’t wait to actually go to REAL Italy 😛 , sorry Ventimiglia, you are too close to me to be labelled “real” Italy.

How I wish you were, Missing Puzzle Piece, you would have loved it. At least you got the postcard this time finally 🙂