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After a great night's sleep in our beautiful hotel we decided to check out the free breakfast (I really try not to book a place unless they have free breakfast). Typical breakfast in Italy is bread, meats, cheeses, cereal, yogurt, and hard-boiled eggs along with water, juice, tea and cappuccino. You can get regular coffee at a lot of places in Italy...they call it Caffè Americano (American coffee) 😊
While down at breakfast Matt noticed that one of the guys there had a Breitling watch. For those of you who don't know what a Breitling is, it's the type of watch that I got Matt for our 10th anniversary. Matt left his at home for our trip (it's not cheap) but this guy didn't and it caught Matt's eye. As it turns out, he and his wife were American and on vacation with their daughter who was about 16 months old. They were from Seattle, he had his private pilot's license, was Army Reserves and had just gotten back from a year in Iraq, so the boys had lots to talk about. We spent quite a while in the breakfast room that morning chatting with Harry and Lorie but finally
The train to Vernazza
Once of the Australians offered to take our picture for us :)said our goodbyes so that Matt and I could head out and explore the other towns.
On our way out of the hotel, Andrea (the hotel owner) caught us and gave us a map of Cinque Terre and mapped out the best routes to take for our excursion, pointing out the best place in Cinque Terre to take pictures (which he marked on our map as "beauty spot"). He also recommended a few restaurants but we don't usually take people up on restaurant recommendations. We've found that most of the time it's more trouble than it's worth to find these places when we're not familiar with the town. So, armed with our map, cameras, and a bottle of water we set out.
First, we took the train to Vernazza, the next town over. We had heard that there was a market on Tuesdays there and wanted to check it out before it closed. On the way we met a really nice group of Australian senior citizens that were on vacation in Italy for 5 weeks. Well, it takes them 24 hours of travel time just to GET to Europe...they might as well make the most of it! Vernazza
definitely had a different feel to it than Monterosso did and we enjoyed walking around it, even though we didn't find the market. After deciding that we'd seen enough of Vernazza we went back to the train station and took the train to the last town, Riomaggiore.
We explored Riomaggiore and then found the seaside footpath that linked the town to the next one, Manarola. It was a nice walk and, while Rick Steves said it was about a 20 minute walk, it took us slighty longer (maybe closer to 45 minutes?) because we kept stopping and taking pictures. Part of the trail is called Via dell'Amore (or Lover's Lane to you and I). The trail was created in the 1920s and, prior to that, there was really no way besides boat to travel between Riomaggiore and Manarola so your marriage prospects were confined to the people in the town you lived in. Once the trail went in though, it was much easier for young people to walk between the towns and it became a lovers' meeting point. As far back as WWII there was love graffiti on the walls (which is how the trail got its name) and
today there's even more of it. I was a little upset at the graffiti until I understood that it's supposed to be there.
In Manarola we stopped at a little shop and bought apples and bottles of water while we were exploring and walked up to the top of the town to get some nice shots of down below. We saw some children playing in what looked like a really tiny backyard that had a swing set and jungle gym in it and then realized that this was the public park. What a very different existence here than what we're used to. I don't know how many of the residents have cars but, because the houses themselves are basically built into the cliffs, the cars are all parked up above on the road. I get frustrated now when I have to carry my groceries up three flights of stairs from my car...I can't imagine having to carry them halfway through the town!
We found the trail that led from Manarola to the next town, Corniglia, and started out on it. This hike was supposed to take about 45 minutes, according to Rick Steves but, again, it took us
much longer. We met a large group of around 30 or so kids accompanied by some adults. I love observing people and noticed that some of the adults in the group spoke Italian while some spoke English. I had a chance to talk to one of the adults and she explained about the makeup of their group. She was there chaperoning a group of students from Chicago Public Schools who were in an Italian class there. They have a sister school in Italy and were on a combined field trip with the Italian students. What a fantastic opportunity for the students! Although I felt bad for the parents who had to watch over them all lol. She did tell me that the Italian students were more badly behaved than the American ones which Matt and I found amazing.
The kids started to get on our nerves so we took a detour off the path to let them get further ahead of us. There was a stairway leading down to the rocks and water and we decided to check it out. The great thing about Europe is that they don't rope off stuff like that. They put a "danger" sign
on it so you know that you could potentially die, and leave it up to your own good sense to decide if you want to chance it. I'm with Matt so of course down we went 😊 Since I'm a bit more accident-prone than he is I took a seat on the rocks and let him climb out as far as he could go and took pictures of him. Once he'd finally gone as far as he could without either a boat or rock climbing gear we headed back up the steps and finished our walk to Corniglia.
Once we finished on the trail we discovered that we still had a ways to go. The main part of town is up the hill (way up) from where we came out. We could take the shuttle bus or walk. Walking gave us two different options...up the steps or walk up the road the that the shuttle bus runs. There were TONS of stairs (somewhere between 360 and 440...I keep reading different numbers) so we walked on the road. Once we reached the top we stopped and got some gelato so I could give my back a little bit of a
rest. All along our walk we kept running into the same group of two couples from Utah and saw them again here. It's fun how we kept seeing the same people on our hike 😊 After our rest we went and found Andrea's "beauty spot" and got some nice pictures of the sea, the coast, and of course us as well. The hikes from Corniglia to Vernazza and Vernazza to Monterosso were the longest and toughest so we wussied out and decided to take the train home, especially since we'd already been to Vernazza that morning. We had to go back down out of the town to get to the train station and decided to try the stairs, since going down them is SO much easier than going up them. I'm SO glad we walked the road up and not the stairs!!
Once we got back to the hotel we decided to do as the Italians do and take a little afternoon nap. Italy gets so hot in the summer that most of the businesses close after lunch and will reopen around 4:30 or so in the afternoon, allowing the population to go home and sleep through the worst
of the heat. After our nap we headed out of the hotel to try and find someplace to eat dinner and ended up running into Harry and Lorie, our new friends from breakfast that morning. They told us where NOT to go to eat because the evening before they'd gone to one of the other restaurants near the hotel and had spent twice as much on dinner as we did. We showed them where we had eaten the night before and decided to all eat there together. It was a great night...we sat and talked and just really enjoyed ourselves. After dinner we had our second gelato of the day and treated Harry and Lorie to their first taste ever of the heavenly stuff. They were big fans 😊
I have no idea how long we spent sitting outside talking but their daughter fell asleep at the table and we finally called it a night so they could take her in to bed. They actually flew into Frankfurt when they arrived in Europe, because it was several hundred dollars cheaper than flying into Italy, so we gave them our information and told them to give us a call when
Via dell'Amore
A great little sculpture we found they get into Germany. I'm not sure if we'll hear from them but we certainly hope so!
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Clayton Lynch
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Great story, brought back good memories
Hey Mandi, just wanted to say that I liked your story. Nice work, putting down all the details of your trip, it really reminded me of all the places along this cool coast line. My brother proposed to his wife here so I had always wanted to check it out. They loved this place and so did we. Take care. Clayton