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The Cinque Terre (five lands) is a national park that contains five villages. Each is jammed into the folds of the cliff. Houses are built on top of each other, literally. There would be no demolishing and rebuilding of the lower ones, because the five others above would in serious trouble. Actually, they all stand on each other’s shoulders too, so it would be more like fifteen…
And if it’s not built completely on top of another house, it’s been glued, perched or jammed in to solid rock somehow. Many of the homes have the cliff face as a feature wall inside. They are all painted in similar pastel colours outside, and most wear green shutters on the windows.
There were lots of fishing boats in the villages, not that we saw any being used. Off season, I hope! The other amazing thing about the area is that over hundreds of years, they have terraced the surrounding hillsides, and they grow anything from olives to grapes to lemons there. Quite incredible to see.
Our room was about 100 steep steps above the cafes below. The view out the window was incredible, looking out uninterrupted to
the Ligurian Sea. We could see Monterosso in the distance, with Corniglia on the cliff nearer to us. On the first day, it was clear enough to be able to see across to France. Our room had a very funky bathroom with an enourmous bath (almost a lap pool), that neither of us water-wise Melbournites could bear to fill. I forgot to take a picture, but you can check it out at
Arpaiu.com , and we had the room called Mea. There was a common room and terrace on the roof where we made meals with ingredients from the local co-op and watched the sunsets. Great stuff.
What was even more remarkable was the fact that there is a major train line that runs through the area. Each of the villages had a station, but for many the majority of the platform was still underground, with only a small part of the platform exposed to sunshine. Rather than curving and winding around the cliff edges like the Great Ocean Road at home, they just tunneled straight through the mountains. Apart from the local trains, and the Express trains going past at 80km/h, we saw long trains transporting Fiats
and Alfa Romeos from the factory to destinations north; perhaps France?
Most of the tourists (and there were lots of them) go to the Cinque Terre to walk between the villages. There are walk of various difficulties, one from Manarola to Riomaggoire taking 25 minutes on paved paths, to ones of several hours climbing up and down the cliff faces on paths like goat tracks. Plenty of Germans and their walking poles and lightweight hiking gear. Plenty of, ahem, larger people off cruise ships being led along the easier paths. Sorry, Dad, we only did two walks. We enjoyed the towns and
the swimming too much for walking!
We only had two and a half short days there. Once again, the Cinque Terre deserved more time… I remember Dad showing me pictures of his visit, and I thought at the time “oh yeah, not bad.” But it stuck with me, and I’m glad that I visited. We were considering extending our stays in Venice and Florence by skipping this area, but I’m glad we didn’t.
Actually, we were short changed a few hours of our time there thanks to the wonders of the snap
Italian train strikes. We caught the train from Venice to Milan, and then to Monterosso, only three short stops away from where we needed to be. The plan was to get off the express train, and wait for a local train to take us to Manarola. Unbeknown to us, there was a 24 hour strike that affected local trains that had been called the night before, so when we arrived at Monterosso, there was 1000 people waiting to get on the train. It’s the only village with a sandy beach, so we just assumed it was a popular spot. So we sat on the platform and listened to the endless announcements in Italian and English (with a Swedish accent) of train cancellation after cancellation. Finally one train was due to come, but the announcements for that one just kept delaying it by 5 minutes at a time. We had a bottle of wine with us, so Clare went and found a bottle opener and a few glasses, and we shared it with the people we were sitting with. What else can you do?! When Bjork the Swedish-Italian train announcer told us of a 50 minute delay (this was after waiting
two hours), we organized a 50 euro taxi ride to our village with another lady who was trying to get to Manarola. It ended up being a lift with the bus driver who was on his way home to La Spezia, but he was great fun to drive with.
I’d go back and do it all again tomorrow.
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Liz McGrath
non-member comment
Beautiful
I think that this is the place that they filmed part of the movie "The Talented Mr. Ripley". Wanted to visit ever since viewing the film!