Cinque Terre

We made it to Cinque Terre pretty easily, it was just a few hours’ drive to Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the 5 towns that we were visiting. Once we found our hotel we took a walk down to the water. Wow. Every direction you can see there is clear aqua water that splashes up against layered rocks. Further inland these same rocks support multi-colored, multi-story buildings that seem to rest on top of one another. It’s really pretty amazing to see in person, I don’t think any of our pictures will do these cities justice.

After an evening of settling in we woke up early to hike from one city to another, a common practice in Cinque Terre. We made the first hike from Riomaggiore to Manarola easily - the path is paved and doesn’t move up and down as (we would learn) the others do.

The second stretch from Manarola to Cornelia was closed for the day due to storms causing the path to be obstructed, so we just took the train about 2 minutes up the coast. The next bit of the hike from Cornelia to Vernazza was noticeably tougher. The terrain is less reliable, lots of loose rocks and muddy puddles, and the path leads up and down hills, so that one minute your wishing for relief from the upward climb, and the next your legs feel wobbly from a steep descent. As difficult as the hike was, the views more than made up for it. Vernazza is gorgeous, and right in the middle of the city is a marina which is flanked by an old church (where a wedding was taking place) and a sort of fort that looks out to sea.

We thought the worst was over with our last hike, but wow were we wrong. The hike from Vernazza to Monterosso was probably the most difficult, if only because we had already been hiking for several hours. It’s a lot like the previous trail, but there are quite a few more stone stairs that were put in probably fairly recently.

On parts of the trail you can see the beach of Monterosso beckoning, and it didn’t take us long to find a place to change into bathing suits and dive into the Mediterranean. The beach is basically rocks, but that didn’t seem to deter any of the people that squished their way into a spot on the beach.

We were so pooped after the hike and our little swim that it took all kinds of energy to order margaritas and drink them, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. Somehow we made it back on the train, but it took a lot of effort. That night we had some average pasta and had a drink while watching the Euro Cup at the only bar in our one-street town.

Our last day in Cinque Terre was a rainy one, so we did some laundry, bought some groceries, and took it easy. Bill came up with a pretty awesome picnic set up for us on our hotel patio, complete with prosciutto, various cheeses, bread, grapes, and wine, and I finally finished my book (Hawaii, by James Michener if you’re wondering - great book). It was such a nice low-key day. I think I’m going to instigate more picnic days like that when we get back to New York.