THE Cinque Terre

Hello there lads and lasses - I mean, ciao uomini e donne. Come stai? I hope you all are well!

Today we will be discussing our trip to Cinque Terre! For those of you that are not in the know, Cinque Terre is a group of five villages located on the "Italian Riviera", or in the north western part of the country (please refer to the map below).

They were reputed to be both beautiful and isolated - which means I desperately wanted to go!

To reach the towns, it is necessary to take a two-and-a-half hour train to La Spezia, and then take the little local train to the first town, Riomaggiore. In order to do the whole thing (even though we didn't actually end up doing it all) we got up really early, like 5:30 am early. Ugh. But we did it and made it to the train by 7-ish. The train ride was fairly uneventful except I got sat on by a rather large high school student in bright green pants. Luckily the loud (and obnoxious - I apologize to EVERYONE for my adolescence) kids were only on the train for a half-hour or so. I tried to sleep through all of it.

We arrived in La Spezia without any problems (except for one of my legs being flatter than the other). Then the wait began. Our train was supposed to come an hour after our arrival in La Spezia...but then an hour became an hour-and-a-half, then two hours, then two-and-a-half hours, etc. We finally ended up hoping on a different train than our original choice, but it all worked out fine and we got to Riomaggiore only an hour or so behind schedule.

A train runs between each town, but the girls and I were set on walking it. Now, I bought "50 Hikes In and Around Tuscany" before coming to Italy and the folks who wrote that book classified the hike as "moderate". (A word of warning about this book - it has been almost completely unhelpful. Almost all of the starting locations can only be accessed by a car, which means I can't get to any of them.) Indeed, the first lap between Riomaggiore and Manarolo was exceedingly easy, to the point I was concerned about the phyiscal state of these so called "hiking experts" that wrote the above book. And it was crowded with old people. And it was utterly beautiful.

We walked through the Via dell'Amore, where I took a few romantical pictures of the girls. We admired the locks of love, literal padlocks that couples hook to the nets guarding against rockslides (safe??!!) to symbolize that their love will last forever. It's a thing they do here -- there are a whole bunch in front of the Uffizi in Firenze. After the stroll we arrived at the train station for the second town, Manarolo. (Looking back, we never actually went through the town...oopsie!) We hopped on the train there because the trail was closed between the second and third town due to something...possibly a rock slide? So we got off the train at Corniglia, and that is where things started to get interesting.

In order to get up to the town we had to climb A MILLION BAJILLION stairs. SO MANY. When we finally got to the top we were congratulated by this sign:

We thought that this sign signaled the decline in the difficulty of our trip...it did not. It only marked the beginning. After the stairs we wandered through the quaint, tiny town of Corniglia (according to Jenn's guidebook, the least impressive of the five...snooty snoot snoot). We climbed the winding streets of the town, noting the ivy-covered restaurants and colorful buildings, the terraced vineyards winding up and down the hillsides. When we reached the town, located on a summit, we looked outward and forward to our unknown destination. "Is that the town all the way out there," someone said, pointing to a tiny speck of pink in a mini-mountain. "No, couldn't be, that is way too far away," someone else replied, but this someone was wrong. Very, very wrong.

The book said the hike was set to last an hour-and-a-half. Jenn, the speed walker that she is, thought that they probably had padded the time. Nope, it took exactly an hour-and-a-half because even though we went at a good clip, the first half was STRAIGHT UP, and the second half STRAIGHT DOWN. Over unsteady boulders and slippery stones, logs, and mud holes no less. Again, I questioned the "moderate" rating in my hiking book, but for a completely different reason. I no longer pictured the writers as asthmatic, wrinkly elders wrapped in synthetic fabrics and zinc oxide; but instead evil, evil sadists with walking staffs and pitchforks. That is probably overstating the point but still...it was more challenging than a mere "moderate" would lead me to believe.

By the time we arrived in Vernazza, we were pooped. Which was perfect really, because Vernazza was the ideal place to unwind. We basically fell down the street leading into the town, and landed at the steps of a darling shopping area. We looked in a few stores, seriously contemplated buying a few items, and took in the glorious day. By the time we made our way down to the Marina, we were hongry. We grabbed pizza, and jeebus, I don't know if it is because I hadn't eaten since 6 am that morning, but it was delicious. I picked a pesto pizza, which has officially converted me to the cult of pesto (I was on the fence before). And after that I had the unicorn of ice creams - cinnamon gelatto, which previously I'd heard rumor of but never actually seen. It was worth the wait.

We took our food down to the inlet area, and laid out on the rocks. The wind dried our sweat and the sun warmed our tight muscles and this is what we had to look at!

Not bad.

I'm sorry to say kids that we never made it to the fifth town. We really did contemplate hiking over to Monterosso...but for some crazy reason, laying in the sun seemed more appealing. Jenn's guidebook told us the hike over would be even steeper than the one we had just climbed, and also assured us we had seen the best town anyway. We didn't need to hear anything more than that.

Until next time kiddos -- which will be Assisi! Are you excited?!? xxx