Our Last Day in Cinque Terre

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Our last day in Cinque Terre dawned fine so we decided to walk from Manarola to Corniglia. From the train station we walked through Manarola and continued up the steep road until we found the turn off for the track. There were a lot more people on this trail than on any of the others that we had done. It started off up the usual very steep slope through vineyards. The industrious people of Liguria have terraced the slopes over the years and they are extensively cultivated mainly with vineyards, but vegetables and other crops as well. We noticed the local people look quite fit and we doubted that you could get many Kiwis to work on such steep land. You don’t see a lot of fat people like you do in New Zealand, except for the occasional tourist, but those ones don’t do the trails. It was similar in southern France where we saw a lot of small dark slim people with a certain style who couldn’t be anything other than French.





We took our time going up the steep hill which also had a section that dropped away sheer from a rough trail, and reached the upper slopes which are not quite as steep. We had some very nice views but were glad to reach the small village of Volastre which is perched quite high up and is a wine making centre. We saw grapes being taken to the press in wheelbarrows. It was a bit early for wine but we found a beer for Dave and sat outside with a nice German couple from Hamburg.





Much refreshed, we continued on our way to Corniglia which was a very steep downhill slope, and which felt like a long way though it was less than 4 k. We were a bit shattered when we got there but a guy from a Texan wine club showed Dave an unofficial public toilet, which helped, and we sat in the top piazza and had a gelato which helped further so we admired the quaint village again as we strolled towards the train station and down the 365 steps.





For our last night we thought it would be nice to revisit the local trattoria but it was shut when we got there so we explored the part of Rio Maggiore that is on the other side of the tunnel, and which has great views where people go to admire the sunset. We walked a bit further and saw the ferry coming in as the sea had subsided sufficiently by this time. They tie the ferry to two bollards and put out a little gangway which drops down from the boat to the landing place quite steeply. It has wheels on the bottom end and sways about with the waves so we could see why they can’t run the ferries if it is at all rough.





When we returned to the trattoria we were greeted like old friends. They didn’t have any specials but Tamara tried the local hand made pasta called trophie with pesto sauce and pine nuts which was very good. Dave had a spaghetti marinara with an impressive array of seafood, and we also shared a dish of fried anchovies which are a local specialty which we thought we should try. They are quite different from the anchovies that you get in little jars, We understood about Secondi Piatti by this time and knew that the anchovies would be just that, not like our main courses, so we had a mixed salad as well which made a very nice meal accompanied by a local white wine which our friendly waitress/cook assured us would work much better with the food than the red wine. We had enough room for a tangerine sorbet to finish and said a fond goodbye to our waitress and gave her some New Zealand chocolate.





We packed for an early start the next morning and all was well until the middle of the night when Dave woke up feeling very ill, he had picked up a tummy bug somewhere. Less said about the night the better.

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