Day 17 - June 30 - Ocean, we missed you!

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As always, despite careful planning the next morning was a scramble. We were running late as it was, and then we didn’t have the right change for the Metro and had to go to a coffee shop with the slowest service, where the bartender insisted I sit down because of my pack and charged me $4 euro for my cappuccino. I was pretty convinced we were going to miss our train, but we made it to Termini, found the right ticket dispenser, and in less than five minutes, bought our ticket, found our platform and hopped on. We had no reserved seats and though we paid for first class I have no idea if we sat in first or second.

What I did realize after the train started moving is we forgot to validate our ticket. Any tickets without assigned seating are good for months, and so must be validated. A gentleman in our car tried to help us talk to the security lady, but she was busy and ignored us. So we sat for two hours with some anxiety, until a ticket taker came, clipped our tickets and passed them back without a word. Lucky! We never forgot to validate again.

We read, did Sudoku, dozed off, ate the lunch we had packed. It was supposed to be a 4.5 hour train ride to La Spezia Centrale, but it was closer to six hours due to some delay or another. About forty minutes before we finally hit the station, we saw it. “Look!” I practically screamed. In the distance we could see the teal blue ocean. I hadn’t even realized how much I missed the water or how desperate I was to feel the crisp ocean breezes. Halifax is on the water, we both work on the waterfront, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a body of water since we crossed the Atlantic two weeks ago. Seeing it was like greeting an old friend!

We bought our Cinque Terre passes (seven days of train and hiking) in La Spezia, and waited at a McDonalds for the 3:45 train. We watched the ocean the whole way to Corniglia, thrilled to be starting our vacation from our vacation, which I had carefully placed mid-way through our trip, though I had had no idea how much we would need it.

We took the bus up to Corniglia, and promptly got lost looking for the place we were supposed to meet our apartment owner. We found it and rang, but she was not there. We asked the restaurant owner across the street, who gallantly called her when he realized we didn’t have a cell phone, although he was amused by our incompetence I think. Eleonora came quickly, greeted us and walked us over to our apartment. On the way she pointed out the hiking trail, and a little swimming hole down several hundred steps. All I could think about was getting into that teal blue water.

The apartment was perfect. It had the most gorgeous views with a balcony right over Corniglia and the ocean, exactly as advertised (see my review here). . As soon as we stepped in it, my only regret was that we could not stay our full six days in Cinque Terre right here. We sat and drank a beer on the balcony, and the feeling was simple : “ahhhhhhh”.

I wanted to swim so bad that Sam agreed to come along. We threw on our bathing suits for the first time in Italy, and wandered down the path and down the stairs. The cove had a small board walk, but it was not a beach. Over the course of the next few days several people would bring small children here and then think twice about getting in. For Sam and I though, it was perfect. We got in, swam out and whatever direction I looked was peaceful: the evening light shining on the ocean; the rocky hills to one side, the tiny town of Corniglia, with houses growing out of its hills, to another. I floated in the clear blue water and thought to myself “THIS is why I work so hard. So that I can do things like this, be here.”

We swam about an hour, then stopped for supplies at the local store on our way back to the apartment. We watched the sun go down, enjoying a bottle of wine on our balcony. “We’re coming back here.” Sam said. I smiled. Cinque Terre had been all my choice, and we had given up Amalfi, Positano, Sorrento - places Sam really wanted to see - to do it. We had said we would stay six days and do it properly and probably never return. But I knew the look of my husband in love; and he was in love with this place.

We headed out for dinner, stopping to say “buon serra” to three elderly ladies who sat out on the path sharing the day’s news and people watching for several hours each evening. We greeted those ladies every night.

We went for a late dinner at the restaurant of the guy who had helped us, a small place called A Cantina de Mananan. The menu was on a chalk board and indecipherable, and entering at 9pm, I think we were a little late for the waiter’s liking (he looked at his watch twice before seating us, and was fairly gruff throughout the service, but in a somewhat charming way). We had a terrific local seafood pasta dish and had fun trying to eat the sails, before the restaurant owner - who had come out to chat with some locals - took pity on us and brought us the utensils crafted for just such food. We had delicious panna cotta for desert, enjoyed a quick discussion with the Canadians at the next table, left a generous tip, and stumbled back to our apartment determined to eat more of that restaurant’s delicious food in the coming days.

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