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Published: August 14th 2012
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Cinque Terre Part 2
Day four
By day four I had to say goodbye to Shannon and Sarah who were off to Florence so Olivia and Addie, the other American girls, and I all headed to the only other breakfast bar to have a group brunch before we all went our seperate ways for the day. Afterwards I caught the train to Monterosso to see the fifth and final village, wandered the length of the beach to both ends before finding a small piece of black sand to lie down on my towel and read my book, after an hour I was drenched as the non reflective black sand was far too hot and the whole experience was unpleasant (my book was also dodgy, I don't get the hype about 50 shades of grey...it is badly written and not at all an engaging story). I headed into wander the market stalls, tiny streets and shops of town before NOT buying two dresses....that's right I actually resisted! Then I had a delicious Caprese salad and chilled out for a while at the restaurant overlooking the beach.
I had enough of Monterosso as it was too big and touristy for me so I caught the train to Vernazza which is the fourth town where I checked out the bay with water almost as clear as Cornelia. I was going to continue reading but the water called to me in its languid tones and I couldn't resist. Over an hour later when I was well pruned, well cooled down and proud of myself for swimming around ( I am not a terribly confident swimmer). I went back to shore for a quick rince off before lying on the rocks to read my book (it was still dreadful but I had nothing else). I eventually decided to go back to my home in Riomaggiore where Addi, Olivia, Clara and I had dinner at an amazing restaurant which was situated just before the entrance to Lovers Lane. It looked over the opposite side of the bay and we ate delicious food while we watched the moon rise over the mountains. As usual, we walked back to our local bar, bar centrale for delicious dessert crepes as it was the girls last evening in Riomaggiore.
My second last day I headed to the Marina for a breakfast of museli and yoghurt while overlooking the bay and finally deciding to bite the bullet and update my blog journalling. I had quite a few blank chunks...Salzburg, Valencia, all of my Iberian Adventure, San Seb, Rome, Italian Adventure, and all of Florence....I have been determined to keep it up, so I had heaps of dot points and outlines to work from and so I let my creative side out for a walk on the keypad of my tablet. Writing on my tablet is not quite as romantic as keeping a hand written journal with artistic notes, drawings and stuck in pieces of memorbilia, but it is still something I want to have as a memory from my trip. I find I forget so much, looking back at previous entries makes my memories come alive again and I get excited about the amazing people and places that I have had this wonderful opportunity to visit. So anyway...it turned out I was able to get about 3-4 blogs done per day as each takes an hour or two (sometimes more) to write.
I continued to write while sitting on the terrace of our appartment until Danni arrived. She is from Melbourne but has been living and travelling in Europe for the last 18 months. I decided I could take a break as I had finally felt like I had made progress so we headed out on the train to Cornelia to walk the steps both up and then down again to my favourite cove with even less people than the previous time! We had a swim, then chilled out on the rocks, then more swimming and more chilling. Such is my amazing and decadent life right now. Eventually we got hungry and walked back up to town to get a freshly made foccacia with ham and cheese, a fresh juicy peach and I had another helping of the amazing frozen yoghurt. We walked out to the end of town to see the incredible view of all 5 towns fro the highest vantage point on the coast.
Danni left to check out Manorola and Lover's Lane and I found a green knook on the steps of Cornelia in a tiny alleyway filled with plants grown by locals and right next to a water point to continue journal writing and do some people watching. I got back to the apartment to meet Danni and drink our last bottle of wine on the rocks watching the sunset and enjoying our holiday. We had dinner at the fancy restaurant in town, I had freshly caught fish with eggplant and pannacotta for dessert. We headed to Bar Centrale for Mohito's where we met Matteo, Andreas and a guy I can't remember, these guys were all lovely people lriginally from Milan but now living abroad. Then the sleezy guys Tizsiano, Alberto, Gabrielle and Erico joined us but particularly Tizsiano and Alberto were far too forward. Danni went a bit crazy at one point and bought us a round of green tree frogs which was midori with milk? We then danced until the bar closed and Danni and I left to go to bed.
My last day at Riomaggiore saw Danni and I and her two friends from Monterosso (also holidaying Aussie's on the way home from 2 years in the UK) at the roof top of the marina restaurant before we left to go our separate ways and I got caught up in my journal. I mostly sat on the terrace before cooking myself a home cooked meal in the apartment kitchen with local food sourced from the town grocery store. Delish! I spent the afternoon at Riomaggiore beach swimming and lying on the rocks (I abandoned the book with a girl in the hostel). Danni and I headed back to the rocks for a breezer while watching our last Cinque Terre sunset with fresh "fast food" pasta from a place in town. It was amazing, we walked in, the pasta is all freshly made that day, you choose your pasta, choose your sause and they make ir for you on the spot and put it in a takeaway container. Not to be creative, you can guess which bar we ended up at for our last drink before bed, yep, bar centrale, I was practically a local. I have loved my first beach holoday and so hope to return to Cornelia, Vernazza and Riomaggiore again.
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