My incredible and amazing Beach Holiday in Cinque Terre

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Pisa to Cinque Terre

Back on the busabout bus for my last trip on the loop! I was the last person on as most people stayed at the hostel and knew to walk out the back...I did not. Luckily the only seat left was the entire back row! Yay sleep seats I can stretch out like the giraffe that I am! :-)

A bit over an hour later we stopped at Pisa to see the leaning tour and surrounding churches. We stopped for an hour and a half so I got my photo, checked out the church, I was told, "you need to cover yourself!" I had forgotten the no showing knees rule....I felt a bit like a hussy the way she said it though! Haha afterwards I sat on the steps to people watch. Pisa is nice but there's not much to see. The most memorable was a tiny child running across the green lawns squeeling with delight and then falling down and rolling around. Just simply full of the joy of life.

Back on the bus and we arrived in La Spezia another hour later. After a long walk up the hill to the train station where I cursed my stupidity for again not packing lighter, I got the train to Riomaggiore. I was stuffed, one month of not carrying my monster on my back and my muscles had gone soft! Two girls in a cafe pointed at me and shook their heads. Hello?! Travelling for a year! Yes my fleece lined hiking boots look ridiculous now, but just you wait! I will not be getting frostbite in November in Georgia! I eventually found the hostel, walked the 30 or so steps up to the apartment with its own balcony and the room with only 2 beds! Glory! Dropped my gear, had a cold shower and then headed into town for a caprese salad and free wifi at the bar (bar centrale), the only thing my apartment was missing, wifi, but the incredible view more than made up for it.

I walked back to the hostel to get my togs on as on my walk I had found the marina, with a beach. I met two new arrivals in our 10 bed dorm, Shannon and Sarah from California. We all decided the beach was the best option fof the afternoon and headed down to negotiate getting in via the giant rocks and many tiny slippery pebbles. Typically Italian style, after 2 mins in the water I heard "ciao" and met Franco a local frm La Spezia who chatted to me while we swam around. I am not a good swimmer but I love the water. I am sure I did not look cool coughing and spluttering whenever a big wave hit me in the face...but the memory makes me giggle so I had to share.

The girls and I left Franco to have sunset drinks at the marina bar which overlooked the entire bay. It was stunning, the perfect way to start 6 days at a seaside destination. We all needed internet and so headed to a bar in town which also had wifi. They also did cocktails, so I had a magerita. It was deadly, it felt like a mixture of straight shots and by the end of it, wow, I felt soo good. We had dinner at the restaurant next door which turned out to be a trip advisor recommended place but I thought my food at least was only average. We moved onto bar centrale where we met Martin from Switzerland and his younger friend Zac from Perth. A few more drinks later and the bar shut for the evening, unpeterbed we headed down to the beach. (I did tell you that first cocktail was deadly....)

We all decided that a swim was the best option now... :-) so there I am at who knows what o'clock going for a swim. I love travelling. Oh but before we got it in there was another person who wanderd over to our bags where Sarah had decided to keep watch. I wasn't about to let that happen so I invited him to come swimming. Haha It was ok, I had actually recognised him as the guitar player who was sitting on the beach that afternoon. He was from Canada and it was his last night. He was so excited I had invited him to join our group (mind you I asked him so I knew he couldn't steal our stuff, but whatever reason works!) so we all went swimming in the dark, with no fear of being eaten by sharks! Awesome! Definately one of my more crazy travel advdntures but so much fun! :-) Our new Canadian friend, John, played guitar and sang with us on the beach for the next few hours and we had a great time!

Day two we all slept late and then Shannon, Sarah and I headed back to our sunset bar to have a yummy breakfast. I delighted in their tourist menu of yoghurt with crunchy muslie. It is the one thing I can't understand about the Mediterranean part of Europe...there is never breakfast, only coffee and a sweet biscuit or chocolate croissant, none of which I can stomache for breakie. We decided we would walk through Lover's lane to the next town, Manorola. We didn't stop in town, we continued along the headland before we found an amazing swimming spot where all the locals were hanging out. It was quite tricky yo get into the water from the wharf but once we were in it was perfect. Shannon had goggles and we saw heaps of tiny fish that were very inquisitive and swimming all around us, it was pretty amazing.

We went back to town to have foccacia's before heading down to where all the tourists were swimming in the alcove of Manorola Bay. It was nice to lay in the sun, relax and people watch. After a sedate walk back through Lover's lane we headed back to the apartment to meet Clara our new roomie, we headed into bar centrale to watch the buskers and have dinner. We sat around and had a bottle of wine between us before the locals decended on the terrace of the bar. It must have been everyone's night off as there were so many people around. Marco, a local from Riomaggiore introduced us to his friends and then invited us to the beach where they were having a bonfire. I hung out with a lovely girl from Canada, Annie before my roomies left me for home. Not one to loose an opportunity for an amazing local experience I headed down to the beach to sit on the rocks, watch the fire and listen to music with the Italians and a couple of girls I met from Amsterdam. Awesome.

Day three was another late start with some fruit for breakie before heading to the town of Cornelia and its 365 steps. Which I later heard was more like 385, I can't confirm, I wasn't counting but there was many. We had a quick photo stop in town of the stunning view of this much more rural town before finding the tiny hidden road down to the marina...which was down much more steep stairs to a small secluded cove which had maybe 40 locals instead of the 100 from Manarola. The water was quite choppy and getting into the sea off the giant rocks was a little tricky but once we were in it was absolutely incredible. The sea was so clear you could see all the way down (it was also quite deep). There weren't as many fish but Cornelia was fast becoming my favourite spot so far.

I liked the steps, I felt like I had earnt my swim and even when we got out and just lay on the rocks to dry off it was possibly my most relaxing beach experience ever. I have spoken to a lot of Aussie girls in Europe and so many of us feel so much more comfotable with our bodies over here. There is no judgement, no expectations or pressure of absolute perfection that many of us feel in Australia. I sometimes feel quite uncomfortable in Australia at the beach, but not here, it is very free. The only catch was we got completely caught up in relaxing we forgot we had to catch the train and ended up having to race up the hill to the top of town, where I HAD to stop at the yogurteria, Shannon thought I was nuts as we were late....and then race down the 365-385 steps back to the train which we would have made if it was ontime, but luckily it was late.

When we got back to Riomaggiore 6 of the girls from our hostel joined forces to go out on a local wine tour. We caught a very hot bus full to the max, with people standing in the isles and no air con up to the top of the mountain which overlooks the town where we met Andreas the local wine maker who had a vineyard of 1000 trees. He works the whole property alone from start to finish, growing, picking, making and selling the wine locally. We walked up the big hills through Andreas's vineyards, admiring his stamina to walk the step stair of the property every day. The view from the top was well worth our effort though, he had a tiny shack which overlooked the surrounding mountains and bay and had set up benches and two hammocks to chill out. I managed to snag the yellow hammock and blissfully rock myself away to oblivion. He gave us a lot of background information on how the wine was made on a small vineyard vs the big productions. He uses the traditional natural methods to grow his grapes and doesn't use any chemicals, which he called antibiotics for grapes, haha.

After we saw his beautiful stone house he took us further up the mountain to the church on top of the hill where we had a 360 degree view of the entire area, it was truely breathtaking. We were then given a challenge, it apparently took only 40mins to walk down to town if we weren't entirely lazy tourists. Only really really lazy tourists would take longer than that. So off we trecked down the hill. We had one stop where Andreas turned to us in a random spot on the trail and said "Who needs water?" I did, and some of the others but I couldn't see where he was going to pull water from in this area of the trail. Suddenly he says follow me an disappears up a hidden trail that leads off into the bush of the hill. I love hidden trails so I followed to where there was a cave up the trail further with a tiny well inside. He moved the water around to freshen it up a bit and then filled all the water bottles from the amazing mountain well. It was so cold and tasty, sounds insane but I think it was more the romance of drinking from a mountain stream.

We made it into town with 2 minutes to spare and headed to Andreas's distillery for our wine tasting. He had fresh foccacia which was salty and delish for the white wine tasting and shortbread for the sweet wine. The colour of the wine was much darker because he left the skins on the grapes longer to add to the taste. It was 18% alcohol so fairy potent. The American girls convinced Andreas to ring his other wine maker friends to come and have a drink with us as they were now on the prowl for an Italian wine making husband. Luckily, or unluckily his friend had injured himself and couldn't come out! Another glass and more giggles later we all decided to have a takeaway dinner at the marina with my two bottles of wine (from Florence) between 8 of us while watching the sun set over the gorgeous towns of Cinque Terre. Once again we headed afterwards to our local watering hole, the famous, bar centrale for cocktails. Blue horizons....yum!

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