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Published: September 12th 2008
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We caught the 7:40am train from Venice to La Spezia on the morning of the 10th of July. We arrived at 12:40pm, had lunch and left our bags at the station. We then took the short train trip to Monterosso, which is the furthest of the five towns at Cinque Terre national park, separated by a series of scenic hikes. When we arrived at Monterosso, we went straight down to the beach, after I bought a new pair of sunnies (I had lost my old pair in Austria. We went swimming crammed between two private beaches (we didn't want to pay for an umbrella), and I've never seen so many umbrellas and sunburnt tourists in one place. We could have done without the crowds, but it was great to swim in the sea. After our swim, we hiked up and up towards the path that leads to the next town, only to find a check point where you have to pay for access to the park. We had no cash so we had to hike all the way back down to the bottom of the hill to find an atm in town, which was fairly annoying. After we found an atm,
The boulder beach
Note the distinct lack of sunburnt american tourists we hiked back up again, and started on the longest walk, about 2 hours to the next town of Vernazza. It was a nice hike if a little hot, we got lots of great photos. Vernazza was a beautiful town, after marvelling at it from a distance for a while we headed down and swam from the rocks. We got a pizza or dinned and ate it on the rocks before getting the train back to La Spezia. We met our host for the night, Ernesto from couchsurfing. Ernesto was a very nice guy, and had a nice apartment with a great view. He didn't speak a lot of English though and the conversation was a little awkward with the language barrier. We slept on a fold out bed in the living room, and we found out before we went to sleep that he left for work at 6am and we had to leave with him. That news was a little unwelcome.
We woke up ridiculously early on the morning of the 11th, and left the apartment with Ernesto semi conscious. We took his advice and wnt downtown to the fruit market, where we had olive bread and grapes
for breakfast which was really good. We had our bags with us and some time to kill, so we went and sat in the park and did some yoga and acted quite inappropriately for a public space... We then went to the train station, left our bags, and had the best melon ever, which we had bought also from the fruit market.
We then took the train to Riomaggiore, and walked the via dell'amore (lover's walk), which was absolutely shithouse. It's supposed to be all romantic, but the experience includes graffiti, exposed concrete, chicken wire and dried chewing gum. It reminded me of one of those tunnels that you find in primary school playgrounds (you know what I mean). We decided not to stick around in Manarola (at the end of lover's walk), and proceeded to Corniglia, where Louise entertained herself greatly by watching a fat guy in a rubber tube in the water. On the hike between Manarola and Corniglia we found an awesome boulder beach. The best thing about it was it was really hard to climb down through the rocks, so despite the multitudes of tourists passing by, the beach was practically empty. It was great
sliding across the smooth boulders and sunning on the rocks. The water was so clear and that beach was the highlight of Cinque Terre. We lapped it up, sometimes forgetting about our audience from the path above the beach. We then got back on the path and reached Corniglia by 2:30pm. When we got to Corniglia we hiked up an massive stairway to the town, and after sweating a lot, we had the best frozen yoghurts in the history of the world, with honey and lemon. The lady who makes them should be knighted or something. I'm looking into it. We then had lunch in corniglia, and went back down the way we came to follow the spray painted signs (Don't ever follow spray painted signs in Italy) to Guvano beach where we were going to meet Ernesto. The signs led us to a tunnel, which we stupidly went into. The tunnel was dank and smelly and we walked for fifteen minutes, before finally reaching the end only for some arsehole in board shorts to tell us we had to pay ten euros to use the tunnel. We didn't like that, and we let him know. He said there was
a sign at the entrance to the tunnel, which was true; it was on the back of the open door, so it was hidden. We at least saved some other people the trek by telling them on the way out not to waste their time. What a dickhead. We refused out of principle to pay, and so hiked back through the tunnel, back up the massive stairs in the heat and over the town to get to the beach, but then missed the path, and so we couldn't meet Ernesto for any more awkward conversation.
We continued on to Vernazza, where we had been the day before, and swam on the rocks again. Louise dropped her brand new Venezian necklace in the rocks, and despite the eager recruitment of an American girl to help find it, we couldn't retrieve it, which was a bit sad. We then had a great pesto pizza and bruschette at a restaurant in town, and then got back on the train to La Spezia, and then again on to Florence. I'd forgotten to write down the directions to the hostel, so we had a bit of trouble following the heavily Italian accented directions to
the hostel, but managed to make it by 10pm and check in.
We got up early the next morning, had breakfast at the hostel buffet, and managed to smuggle enough bread and jam to cover lunch as well (you gotta do it). We then went to an office in the centre of Florence and hired an audioguide tour. The audio tour guides were Vincent and Bonnie, and they were pretty funny. It reminded me of Anchorman, Vincent was always knowledgeable and condescending, and Bonnie was "just a girl". It was a bit much actually. We saw the main cathedral, the Ponte Vecchio bridge, Palazzo Vecchio where one of Michalangelo's David's is, and spent some time at the markets. It was 37 degrees that day so we were pretty eager to get back to the hostel. The hostel had a pool which was awesome, so we had a dip and a sauna. The pool area was like a bad seventies disco, complete with changing colours and bad music. We went to town and had a good meal of pasta, and then came back and had a beer at the hostel bar. We then met some nice Canadian girls who were
Vernazza
From the hiking path staying in our dorm and we went to a club with them and their ditzy peroxided friends, which was good fun.
On the morning of the 13th we did our laundry at the hostel and had an extended breakfast while talking with our Canadian friends and waiting for the torrential rain to stop. We then headed to the Uffizi gallery, supposedly one of the best art galleries in the world, and waited 3 and a half hours in a short but completely static line. We passed the time by writing postcards, playing 20 questions and trying to convinve fancy restaurant owners to let us use their toilets. After all that, the museum was a bit crap. There were some Botticellis which were ok, two unfinished Da Vinci's, which were not his best work, and a whole bunch of bad sculptures and religious paintings. After the museum, we grabbed takeaway chinese, and ate it at the station while waiting for our train to Rome at 7pm.
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