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Published: June 12th 2017
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These are the trip notes for today's suggested hike:
Cinque Terre Park; Coniglia, Vernazza, Monterosso- The walk today really allows you to explore the National Park of the Cinque Terre. Starting from Monterosso, you walk along the olive groves with panoramic views of the sea. Your path continues gently towards Vernazza, an important and historical village being the only natural harbour of the Cinque Terre. Return by train. Distance 9km; approx. 4 hours walking. Ascent 300m, descent 300m.
We started today's hike in Monterosso which is located at the very center of a tiny natural gulf. Starting from sea level, we climbed about 500 meters over a couple of hours to arrive at the Sanctuary of Soviore. This is the oldest sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the whole area. Recently the archaeological excavation conducted here discovered that, prior to the church we see today, once stood a smaller building, dating back from the 8th century. You'll see lots of pictures that look a little cloudy in this blog and that's because this was something on Alec's bucket list "to hike in the clouds" so he wanted to get plenty of pictures of this experience. By the time we
reached this The Sanctuary of Soviore, we were super sweaty and thirsty so we stopped for a quick bite to eat and a refreshing beer in the little cafe adjacent to the church. Once we were adequately fueled up, we hit the trail for our hike into Vernazza. We had greatly anticipated this village based on others we know who had visited the area and it did not fail! One of the memories from this hiking adventure was the feeling you get when you are high in the cliff and you come around a bend in the the path all of a sudden you have your first glimpse of the village that is your destination for the day. It was surprising how much further we always hiked after that point to reach the village, winding further through the woods and eventually coming to a point where you'd start a gradual decline, where usually the last 30 - 45 minutes was spent on stairs or natural steps built into the hillside. Once we reached the outskirts of Vernazza, we entered into a maze of winding streets (called "carrugi") wrapping around the homes and businesses built into the hillside. At any given
time, you wouldn't really know where you were in the maze but eventually we made it to the "Ciazza", the small village square in front of the sea where we enjoyed some amazing food seaside including pesto pizza, a specialyty of the region and to Ralf's delight some German wheat beer. This port has always been the most important of Cinque Terre; it was built especially for galleys (long ships that could be propelled by human oarsmen, used for warfare and trade until late 16th century, when galleon replaced them) that since the age of the Roman Empire carried wine and olive oil from here to the capital.
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