Cinque Terre

Colourful houses build into the sides of perilous cliffs, aqua-marine waves licking the rocky edges below fishing villages and a train to connect the communities separated by narrow walkways and dark mountain tunnels. This is Cinque Terre.

In Italian, cinque is five. Terre, is earth or land as in terra of terra-cotta if you are familiar with the earthenware. Quite appropriately then, Cinque Terre is made up of 5 towns built into the land. These fishing villages once remote jewels, are now becoming more popular with tourist though they still keep there local charm to date. When I first mentioned to Giulia through email of our plan to head up to Cinque Terre for a few days, she encouraged the visit to this gorgeous area, but had also expressed her surprise in our knowledge of the villages.

After taking a 3 hour train ride from Florence to La Spazia, we travelled on another train for approximately 15 minutes to reach Manarola (the second town in the set of 5 making up Cinque Terre). It would be in Manarola where we spend our nights. By day we explored the other villages, took in the most famous local cuisine and plunged into the wild sea.

Though we hit another obstacle upon arriving in Manarola, stemming from our plight in Tel Aviv, things would work out for the better. When we arrived at our previously booked hostel in Manarola, we were met by a lunatic of a man. Upon giving our name to lay claim to our reservation he freaked out about how we had given him a stolen credit-card (on-line booking from months before), how he’d emailed us over 20 times, how he’d called Canada at “probably talked to our mothers” etc. etc. He was screaming and I think, almost hyperventilating with what looked like anger towards us. Dan tried to interrupt him, and calm him down a couple times as he went on and on and on. We were understanding that this hostel, unlike all the other ones we had stayed at or booked, charged 3 days in advance to secure reservations. We hadn’t realized this or thought about this implication with our credit-card being stolen. We thought we’d just pay with our new credit card when we arrived like all the other places. Oh well, too bad for us – our mistake if that is there policy and we hadn’t read it right? But he just kept going – like how we’d given him this stolen-card (forget the fact that we’d actual been victims of a real theft!) and didn’t seem to understand how when you haven’t been able to check your email in the past 3 days that it doesn’t matter if there was one message sent as a heads up to the problem or 20! Finally, I cut him off and said “so basically, you are trying to tell us you gave up our beds and there is no room for us?” Yes, that was the case – only there was one, more expensive room left for just the one night. The rest was fully booked. As he tried to go on again about how we’d screwed it up (I still can’t believe his attitude seeing as he would be the one with the home to go to after work and we were the ones not only at the end of robbery but without a bed for the night) I told Dan I was going to run back into the town and see what other rooms might be available while he waited there at the hostel in case someone else came it inquiring about rooms – Dan would grab the one night so we wouldn’t be stuck.

Off I went. I actually had a plan in mind. For some reason at the moment this madness was unfolding at the hostel I recalled us passing a little place that had said “camera” (rooms in Italian). When we’d passed it, I had noted the cute little balcony and had said to Dan, “wouldn’t it be cool to stay there”. I thought to myself, this is God’s intervention. After “communicating” with the Italian only speaking woman who ran the little store underneath the rooms she rented I found out this would be the perfect place to stay. I ran as fast as I could up the hills to find Daniel so we could ensure a booking. In the days to come we fully enjoyed this private room with the balcony. A much better option to the busy dorm of a hostel that was only 6 Euro a night cheaper!

That first night we enjoyed a late night, outdoor dinner of gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce, minestroni soup, a variety of cheeses with salad and wine. In the area of Cinque Terre, famous local cuisine includes seafood, pesto and focaccia.

Over the next several days we walked or rode the train to Riomaggiore, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterossa al Mare. Riomaggiore was much like Manarola, the town of Corniglia was up some 300 or so stairs, Vernazza was a picturesque town surrounding a bay and Monterossa was a busier beach town. One day we even took a little local bus into the hills (Groppo) to visit a wine co-op (and olive press museum that was really nothing much to see). A highlight was also the ocean swimming in Manarola. The colour and foaming of the water reminded Dan of his shaving cream. It was very salty and the perfect coldness to be refreshed without much squealing (from me – Carly, of course!).

Such a beautiful, beautiful place.

Manarola, Cinque Terre

Photograph from Corniglia, Cinque Terre

Vernazza, Cinque Terre

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