Doing it big in the Cinque Terre-My weekend in heaven!

“The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine.” --- Thucydides, Greek Historian, 5th century BCE.

On Friday afternoon we left for a weekend trip to Cinque Terre, Italy. They are five little towns located right on the Mediterranean with breathtaking views, brilliant colors, lots of Americans and buckets of charm!

We ran into some of our friends who were heading to a high school reunion in Northern Italy and got to sit with them on the train. They taught us some useful phrases for the weekend- like “have pity on us, we’re tourists”. Little did we know, we wouldn’t need these phrases because there are more Americans in Cinque Terre than Italians (this is most likely false-but at the time it certainly felt like that).

Let me preface this blog entry by saying that Cinque Terre (all five of them) is probably my new favorite place on the planet (note: until further exploration). It is one of a kind beautiful. Traveling is exhausting when it is filled with History and Culture and museums, Cinque Terre is different. It is my kind of place where the only thing to really do is explore the natural beauty of our planet. Your senses are, of course, over stimulated, but in a good way. There is so much natural beauty that I think the longest we spent inside was on the train to and from the cities (I would say sleeping-but we didn’t do too much of that).

Anyways, we arrived in Monterosso (the northern most of the 5 cities) at around 11pm on Friday evening. After our initial screams and leaps of excitement and overwhelming beauty, we started to think about where we would stay that night. We walked along the beach and scoped out some nice places. We also walked past a really hip bar with tons of people. Our thoughts were to drop our bags somewhere so that we could go out too.  Because of this (and of course other things-like it not being safe-that’s for you, mom!) we decided to check into a hotel. We got an incredible deal on it and it had a lovely terrace and a HUGE bed! 

We went out at about midnight and tried to find this bar that was mentioned in my guide book. We think that because of the floods, the place may have shut down or been destroyed.

There was a really bad flood at the end of October that drastically damaged almost all of the five cities. We could see the town still trying to rebuild its image and community. It was very devastating to see that even after 5 months the damage is so severe.

So we walked back to the “hip” place and sat down at a table inside. We weren’t there for more than 5 minutes before we realized that we were definitely the only non-locals there. The bartender brought us a bottle of the house red wine and we cheered to arriving in such a beautiful location. The wine was a bit too dry for my taste-but it was a nice atmosphere and we were enjoying the people watching. It quickly hit us that this seemed like more of a private party than a bar-which is when we started drinking a little faster to avoid the awkward encounters about how we were in someone else’s party. We made several friends and danced the night away with Viola and her sister.

 At about 2am the owners started kicking us out (we didn’t even have to pay for our wine!). We made our way down the beach with some of our new friends and played on the rocks and listened to music until about 3am when we decided to head back to our hostel.

Before we went out Lauren and Claire decided we should get up at 6am to take full advantage of the day-I was crossing my fingers they would change their minds after our late night.

The next morning we didn’t end up waking up until about 9am and I was the one who had to cattle everyone out of bed (not!). We woke up feeling the effects of the night’s shenanigans, but quickly recovered thinking about the exciting day’s activities. We checked out of the hotel, grabbed some focaccia and hopped onto the next train to Riomaggiore (the southernmost city). Our plan was to use that as our home base and hike from there to the other cities.

We found a hostel in Rio and were able to bargain the price of our room down (thank you Morocco!). It was a really cute apartment style hostel with 6 beds, a kitchen, and a bathroom. We were getting situated when one of our roommates arrived. He is studying in Northern Italy but is originally from Pennsylvania! We told him our hiking plans and asked if he wanted to join. He was traveling along and was excited to have some companions-so he joined us!

This is when Claire realized she gave her passport as collateral at the hotel and never asked for it back. After a minor panic attack, we went to the office of the hostel and the guy called and asked them to hold it until we were able to make it back.

We grabbed some coffee and I sent a mass (3 people) email to the people who would be worried if I didn’t message them and then we set out onto our hike!

We started with the Via del l’amore trail which is the hike between Riomaggiore and Manarola. It is a beautiful path right on the side of a mountain overlooking the ocean. There are locks all over the sides of the trails representing people’s love and relationships.

This is the part where I felt so sad that Luke wasn’t with me L

But I was also so thankful that I had my friends to enjoy this magnificent trail with.

When we arrived in Manarola we got some gelato (of course) and walked around the town a little, we even saw some ducks!

We didn’t stop for long though because we still wanted to do the hike to the next town and it was already around 2pm.

The next leg of the hike between Manarola and Corniglia was absolutely my favorite hike. There were parts where all you could see was the ocean, the other towns perched on the cliffs and the terraces with grapes and olives surrounding you. There were wildflowers, pine trees, butterflies, and quaint little Italian houses nestled in the mountains.

It was a pretty difficult hike because first you have to climb up onto the mountain, and then it’s relatively flat until you descend into the town on the other side.  But it was 100 percent worth it! The weather was also perfect for us! We woke up and put on our bathing suits underneath our clothes (in hopes of being able to swim) but it was overcast all day. This happened to be in our favor because we were SWEATING on the hike. And occasionally there would be a cool breeze which supplied the cherry on the top of our amazing day!

When we FINALLY arrived in Corniglia we found a little restaurant overlooking the ocean and ordered a bottle of wine and a specialty of the region (pesto pasta). I wish I had a higher quality camera because I take FAR too many pictures of food that just don’t happen to look as appetizing in my photos as they do in real life.

 The meal was fantastic and after it we wondered the streets a little bit and bought a little box of olives. We walked down to the “beach” which was really just boulders. Lauren played with the stray cats and I ran away. Lauren and Claire took a nap and Harrison (in case this isn’t clear, Harrison is our friend from the hostel) and I enjoyed the beautiful beach and ate about 1000 olives each. After we realized that we weren’t going to be able to see the sunset because of the clouds, we started to head back to the train station.

Once back in Riomaggiore we were all exhausted so we rested and refreshed a little bit before heading to dinner.  We went to this adorable little place surrounded by windows (and many Americans).

I ordered the “norma” pizza with aubergine, mozzarella, and tomato sauce. And we ordered a bottle of the white house wine for the table. It was DELCICIOUS! I had such a great dinner and I was in such a good mood (the wine was definitely getting to my head-or maybe it was the fact that we were in such a beautiful place and I was surrounded by such beautiful people). We were all feeling super happy so we decided to order dessert! I ordered Tiramisu and it was seriously the most incredible thing ever! I forgot my camera so unfortunately you can’t see a picture of it (sorry) Not that is would look appetizing anyway.

After dinner we went to a little local bar and drank beer on the terrace (I actually didn’t drink any). It turned midnight when we were sitting on the terrace so we tried thinking of an April Fool’s joke to play on the other people at the bar but we could only think of violent things that would have negative repercussions-so we stopped trying.

We returned to the room and found that it would only be the 4 of us in our little apartment, so that was awesome! We sat around while they finished their beers and talked about important things like superheroes and whether we would use our powers for bad or good.

I looked in my guidebook and did a little planning for the next day and then we all crashed.

I laid in bed reflecting on my incredible 24 hours so far. I am so blessed <3

The next morning we woke up at about 8:30 and cleaned up and prepared for another exciting day in the Cinque Terre! Harrison had an 8 hour train trip home so he left early. Claire, Lauren and I walked up to the church to see when their services were and dropped our stuff off at the hostel office. They agreed to hold it for the day while we hiked around.

We went to the train station to see if we could catch a train to Vernazza and then do the hike from there to Monterosso. I think our good luck had to come to end somewhere. We were informed that there was a train strike from 9am-5pm. Our train back to Menton was scheduled for 5:08. But the thing with train strikes is that they are very sketchy and you never know when the trains will be arriving. We were contemplating taking the ferry when a train arrived! (YAY! Luck came back!). We rode the train to Vernazza and met a nice lady who told us that Vernazza was the town hit the hardest by the floods. We walked around the town a little bit and saw the rehabilitation process. The community had come together and painted murals on some of the doors to promote community and unity. It was really sweet.

 Their beaches and main rode were totally destroyed. We stopped in a little market and bought sandwiches and a bottle of wine to take on our hike and have a picnic.

The hike was HARD. The sun had come up and it was about noon when we started. It was straight up hill for about 35 minutes. The view overlooking the ocean made it much more bearable, and the fact that when people passed us they would laugh at us for carrying a bottle of wine around J If you haven’t already noticed we drank a lot of wine this weekend. But you know the saying “when in Rome”. I figure since Rome is in Italy it’s okay to just broaden the spectrum a little.

We made it to a little lookout spot and stopped to eat our lunches. The wine was light and a little sweet, the perfect combination for drinking on top of a mountain overlooking the Med. Sea.

As we continued down the trail I hiked in the back and pretended to fall down and start yelling. Lauren and Claire ran over and started to freak out.

Then I yelled “April fools!” I’m funny.

When we arrived in Monterosso, Claire went to the hotel to collect her passport and Lauren and I tried to get tickets. We didn’t have any luck and decided we would just take the ferry back at 4pm and collect our bags and get on the 5:08 train. We went to the beach with the rest of our wine and laid out on the warm sand. We went swimming in the sea and it was REALLY cold. We went all the way in and swam until our bodies turned numb. The waves were pretty big but it was so refreshing to float in the water and look up at the beautiful hillside village.

At about three thirty we went over to catch our 4pm ferry only to discover that the 4pm shuttle does not start until April 6^th. So that’s not good. We were essentially stuck in Monterosso without our bags and with no train home. We ran back to the train station and there was a train leaving for La Spezia (one stop passed Rio) so we ran and jumped onto just in the nic of time!

Unfortunately, the next thing we know we are SPEEDING right by our stop. We got off at the next station and quickly found a train going the other way. It was getting really scary because the hostel office that was holding our stuff closed at 6 and it was about 5:30. The train took FOREVER to leave and we were all pretty stressed out.

When we finally made it to Rio I ran all the way up the hill to collect our bags while Lauren bought our tickets and figured out the train schedule. One was leaving at 6:08 so we literally ran ALL the way back to the train station to catch it on time.

Moral of the story: we ran a lot and stressed a lot, but we made it home to Menton at about midnight. The train ride was relatively uneventful. I slept a lot!

To sum up the weekend: we drank massive quantities of wine (some bad, some good), hiked for hours on end, soaked in the beauty of Western Italy, and lounged around the Mediterranean until we were forced to return to Menton ;)

Being back is excellent. But, I have lots to do before I leave for Barcelona on Thursday night!

Ciao ciao bella!