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Published: April 4th 2008
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Corniglia
One of the five coastal towns that make up the Cinque Terre Taking a morning train out of Florence, we arrived in Levanto before noon. Levanto is just outside the national park of Cinque Terre, a series of five coastal cliff clinging towns. The standard deal is to start at one and walk the coast, up and down cliffs and hills, from town to town. Words would never do the views justice, so I'll not even try.
This trip was exactly what I wanted. We'd been city locked the entire time here, taking tons of walks but never really getting outdoors. I'm an outdoorsy type of dude, and the seven hour hike was just what I needed. Really cleaned my mind out, made me sore and tired, and turned into a simply perfect day.
After the hike, we had a drink at Manarozza while watching the sun set over the ocean. Nothing could be better. We walk to the train station, and wait a good half hour for the next train. Oops, "canceled", says loudspeaker. Then the train headed the other direction is canceled. Then our next train is canceled. Wondering what's up, we walk to the computerized schedule and find all the listed trains canceled. Now we're a bit concerned,
Sunset at Manarola
A beautiful sunset to finish a beautiful day... before we met the Americans... so we walk back into town and ask the first dude we see where we can catch the bus. He says that the bus stops running at 9PM, so we sprint up the hill to find the stop. We wait until 9:30, then walk back down the hill wondering what we're going to do. Figuring we'll have to take a second room and blow some more money, we walk into the nearest hostel and complain about the trains. Informing us that there was a train strike until 9, we're told that the trains are probably running again and that we'll be able to get to our original hostel after all.
Euphoric, we literally run to the train station. The first train out is 10:30, so we have a bit of a wait in the cold. It actually isn't bad, but about 30 minutes into the wait a group of a half dozen American kids show up. They're dancing and singing around the platform, and it soon becomes clear that we're waiting for the same train. We're a bit peeved that we have to spend the next ten minutes trapped on a train with these hyped up morons, but the glow of the day is still shining through this minor setback. Then one of them mentions that he forgot to bring his tripod on the hike. Normally an innocuous comment, it suddenly strikes Lucy that one of the beds in our hostel dorm had a tripod on it. She turns to me and says in horror "I think they're in our room!". I laugh at the absurdity of the idea; it seems a bit far fetched, as there are probably 30 hostels in the immediate area. No way are they even at our hostel, much less our room.
We spend the next few minutes before our train comes making fun of the idiot kids, who pile into the train car immediately behind us. Halfway through the trip back to Levanto, I see in the reflection that the kids have started climbing all over the car behind us. Sitting in the luggage storage, dancing in the aisle and singing at the top of their lungs, I suddenly feel too old to be surrounded by all this youthful enthusiasm. Lucy and I get off at Levanto, and so do the kids (uh-oh). To put some distance, Lucy and I power walk away from the train station. We've spread apart from the kids by at least 100 feet, when Lucy turns to me and says "Are they running?". Immediately after the words leave her mouth, one of the punks yells "Let's run!". The absurdity of this coincidence busts us up. The kids run for a bit and get gassed, while Lucy and I walk through our hysterics and get back to our hostel. Convinced by this point that they'll be joining us, we fly into the hostel and barricade the outside door with laundry baskets. Sprinting upstairs to our room, we quietly unlock the door ad poke our heads inside. It's late, and we don't want to wake anyone, but there's nobody home. Damn.
My new plan is to hope that they went to a bar, and to try and get into bed before their return. No such luck. When I step out of the shower, the room is simply crawling with young American idiocy. And I don't mean the good, fun idiocy that Lucy and I still occasionally engage in ourselves, but instead a callow, fatuous idiocy completely devoid of interesting conversation or content. While lying in bed, Lucy and I were regaled at least a half dozen times by a young lady with a voice like a foghorn about how she barely missed some people from her group on an island today. "I saw you sail away on the ferry!" she shrieked. "Did you see me? I waved." Later, "Did you see me wave? We just barely missed each other." Still later, "I waved! Did you see me wave? I totally waved!!!". Repeat perceptually ad infinitum. Finally, after about an hour of insidious, content free, mind numbingly boring and inane conversation, they decide to go down to the beach and skinny dip. Thank God. We turn off the lights and go to bed, only to be awakened an hour and a half later by the kids stage-whispering return. FINALLY they go to sleep, and so do we.
We wake up early, bid a fond farewell to college freshman stupidity, and take a morning dip in the ocean. We have a couple hours on the town, then catch the train for Venice.
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