Where in the world is Mike Lu?
April 13th, 2005I’ve gotten some emails asking if I’ve dropped on the face of the Earth, so I started thinking that maybe I should take the time to update my blog. 
I’m currently in Cinque Terre, IT. It’s the one spot that I really wanted to go to that we missed on the Italià Bionic Tour of 2004. For those of you that haven’t heard of Cinque Terre before, it’s a series of five towns built on the steep hillsides along the west coast of Italy, right on the Mediterranean . I do mean this literally…the towns are actually built on the hills. As a result, the colorful buildings making up each town are actually tiered up the hillside and strech all the way right to the water. Absolutely gorgeous. There’s a hiking trail that links the five towns I did yesterday, which was a good challenge but a pleasure to be out in nature again…I’ve been having withdrawls since Tiger Leaping Gorge. There was even a naturalist beach off the trail that we hiked down tofor a refreshing swim in the (cold) Med. Perfect for a hard hike on a warm day.
Shortly after my last post, I moved out from Siena to Venetzia (Venice) for three nights. There I started encountering some of the worst weather of my trip, with low temeratures, cold rain, and a stiff wind. Maybe Italià is sad that Elf left?
It was my second time in Venice and I didn’t have too much desire to spend much time in the grossly expensive canal town (especially with the weather), but I stayed there because of it’s vicinity to Verona, an hour away. From April 7th to 11th was Vinitaly, the largest and most important wine exposition in Italy and perhaps all of Europe (the only contender is the French equivelant). I went only on Saturday and it was nuts! Vinitaly took place at the Verona Fiere, a exposition complex. Halls and halls filled with winemakers from every region of Italy and even some from Hungary, Slovenia, France, Argentina, and more! Each booth was incredibly elaborate, some of them two stories tall, and all of them had free wine flowing from each to try. Woo! Considering the elegance of the booths, the high admission price of 35EUR/day, and the importance of the expo, I can’t even phantom what it costs to have a booth there. As such, I imagine that only the best vineyards can afford to showcase their wines there and the quality of the vino certainly reflected it. An absolutely amazing day.
I’ve got some new photos up today, so check ‘em out!