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Published: October 5th 2005
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Manarola
The cliffside town where we stayed. You can tell how it's built on a cliff by the difference in height between the houses. On Friday we gladly left our room behind in Rome to hop on train for the lovely towns known as Cinque Terre. These are 5 small towns on the Western coast of Italy nestled among cliffs along the shore. We took a bus to the train station then hopped on a 7:35 train to La Spezia and arrived at 11:52. We then took another train shortly after to the 5 towns known as Cinque Terre. There seemed to be a nice hostel in the 2nd town, Manarola, so we stopped there at hiked up a hill to a very nice hostel, and the only one in town! We left our bags but couldn't get into our rooms until 4pm.
This hostel was very modern, quiet, and clean, and it maintained that by having some strict rules. We could only shower from 7-10 pm, and we had to use coins to operate the showers. Each person got one 5 minute coin for free, but you could purchase more for 50 euro cents. The nice thing was that we were able to get a quad and share the room by ourselves, and we had our own bathroom with shower. We also could
Sunset in Manarola
Just seeing this makes me want to go back... only do laundry until 10 pm, which was a problem since it took 3 hours to do a single load! I was desperate to do laundry but would have had to skip dinner to do it, so I found a grocery store and bought soap for handwashing to wash necessities. It's amazing what you can figure out from pictures on labels even if you don't know the language! I discovered the next morning that damp socks really aren't that bad once you get used to them.
Back to our day...tt was actually sunny when we arrived and much warmer than it had been. We had a lunch down by the train station, and both Tanya and I ordered seafood. I ordered shrimp pasta and was served shrimp that was cooked whole, with everything still attached....not very pleasant to look at! Wilson volunteered to peel the first one for me, and after that I just did it on my own. I definitely prefer my shrimp fully peeled! After lunch we took the famous "lovers walk" from Manarola to Riomaggiore called Via Dell'Amore, which is basically a path carved out of the cliffs. I was so excited to be at the
Vineyards of Manarola
Vineyards surround the countryside and cliffs around several of the towns. ocean, hearing the waves below, and smelling the ocean air. I luckily had my "floppy hat" to protect from the sun, which was extremely bright. We both were so excited to finally be away from the city and the noisy cars and motorcyles/scooters. No cars or motorized vehicles are allowed in the towns themselves, so they're very quaint and quiet and peaceful.
After the hike the couples split up. Tanya & Wilson went on to Vernazza to enjoy the beach area, and Joe and I had ambitions to take the train to each town. We had hiked to Riomaggiore and were staying in Manarola, so that only left 3. We stopped at the one just past Manarola called Corniglia, which is apparently the known as the cliff town because you must walk up a cliff from the train station to reach it. We were warned that it was a hike, and it was! I just read that it was 377 steps or 33 flights of stairs! It was a very small quaint town that had maybe one restaurant and just one or two little shops. We kept looking for a town square and it turns out we'd already gone
Train tracks & Manarola
Manarola is in the background, and this is the view from our cliffside walk from Manarola to Riomaggiore. Notice the train tracks. To get there and between towns, the tracks are either carved through the mountains or at the edge of the cliff, and you can see both in this picture. through it. Joe led us "off the beaten path" through some streets in town and we ended up walking through some vineyards and smelling what we assume was fermenting wine in some of the houses. We got to see local kids riding bicycles in the street and a local wine vendor was helping her daughter with her homework. It was the first time Joe and I felt like we really saw an Italian village where people lived instead of visited.
After the hike back down again, we skipped Vernazza and went on to Monterosso. We had seen in our guide a cheap place for internet and wanted to relax for an hour and maybe blog, but after we hunted the place down we found out they didn't have internet anymore. We ended up at another place that charged several euros the first 10 minutes then an even more expensive rate per minute after that, so we just quickly logged on to check our email. We were happy to find out that our cat, Lucy, was doing well with our friends James & April, and she had even typed a message on the laptop for us.
We took the
Via dell'Amore
We had some great views of the ocean on our "lovers walk" from one town to the next. train back to our hostel and checked in, then met up with Tanya & Wilson for dinner near the main square. We had some good pasta "family style", and Wilson had to indulge in some red meat in the form of an Italian steak. We then had to hurry back to our hostel so we could all get in our showers before 10. Joe and I ended up with an extra coin each, but after being used to short or cold showers we almost had trouble using up our full ten minutes. The coin system worked though...we had very nice hot showers, even at 9:30 at night. Our beds were very comfortable and we enjoyed a great night of rest with my laundry hanging out the window and around the room!
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