On the road

Landscapes Along the Mediterranean

By Eric Vazquez

While making our way from France to Italy, we stayed at a place that made me feel like I inhabited the mind and body of Stephen King on one of his regular workdays. Getting to the  Cuccaro Club was literally a four kilometer climb straight up into the thin air of the Alps. The outside of the hotel was a writer’s paradise, complete with a bright rainbow reflecting a far off storm and starry sky that looked like a black popcorn ceiling close enough to touch once the sun went down.

The climb was so treacherous that our bus driver had to abandon his ship for one night and jump on a shuttle with us up the mountain. It was 90 degrees at the base of the mountain, and 15 minutes later we all breathed in the cool 75 degree air near the summit.

The grounds were so remote from the rest of Italy that hotel pets roamed the property freely and doors of cars and hotel entrances stayed open all night. I could imagine Mr. King here laying on a hammock hatching some devious plot while he was awake. The inside of the hotel however, was a look inside the mind of Mr. King once he dozed off on that same hammock. It was like ‘The Shining’ meets ‘Secret Window’, with enough charm and delicious food to make me want to stay in the oversized nightmare dollhouse for another night.

Our journey through Spain, France, and Italy, was very much like a small stretch of that cliffside road up the mountain. Picture the road hanging off the mountain. The flat rock rising straight up into the sky on the left, and the steep drop overlooking the depths below on the right. Now, imagine walking down the middle of that same road, as an ant. No danger of falling off to the right, and no eagerness to challenge the rock walls to the left. THAT is exactly what our tour of Europe was like from our seats on the busses and bullet train.

From Barcelona to Rome, we essentially followed a seaside route overlooking the Mediterranean to our right, and looking up to the Pyrenees in Spain, and Alps in France and Italy to our left.

In the middle of those two contrasting levels of Earth, was where most of the life was happening. Farmlands and coastal towns seemed to have enough climatic variation between the foothills of the mountain ranges and beaches of the Mediterranean, to sustain many agricultural ventures. Vineyards, olive groves, herds of sheep, dry lands, green lands, tall pines and palm trees were seen from our windows and smartphone camera displays.

The landscape we encountered on this route had everything: Beaches on the right that kept tourists armed like gunslingers with sunblock spray cans; Mountains on the left that boasted some visible snowcaps; and even more in between.