BigWeather's Blog

After a busy day traveling it was only natural for us to wake a bit late, after 8a.  Finally staggered to breakfast about 9:30a in the main office / lobby of the Locanda del Sole — a small room with four or so tables and a bar / kitchenette area that Enrico was busying himself with.  I had croissants with chocolate, toast with jelly, and breakfast tea, all decent.  Headed back to the room and readied to leave, leaving about 10:30a.

Rather than tackle the steep slope down through town and the pedestrian tunnel to get to the train station we decided to take one of the side roads with a number of switchbacks.  What was nice about this route is it led us past the town church and a small fortification that mainly served as a watch post against pirate attacks (yes, pirate attacks!).  I walked around the fortification’s battlements some and took pictures while Michelle and Addison sat on a bench and looked out to sea — for pirates, perhaps.  Next to the fortification was the town’s elementary school, a tiny affair.

Having seen that we continued on down the hill and arrived at the station.  We all agreed that the steep route through down was the way to go — just soooo much quicker.  Stood in line at the ticket office (biglietteria) and purchased three tickets for a single ride for four euros each.  Hopped on the train to the third town (going from south to north with Riomaggiore being the first), Corniglia, as that is the only one not reachable by boat.  Once there we realized we should’ve just used our tickets to go all the way to the fifth town, Monterosso al Mare, as Corniglia was many hundred steps up and we were already running late.  We could’ve taken a bus, I suppose, but all that we had heard was that it was the most miss-able of the five so… we missed.  Took some pictures, though!

Bought three more four euro tickets, this time taking the train to the fifth town, Monterosso al Mare.  Monterosso is by far the most tourist-friendly of them all — being relatively easy to get to and having a nice sandy beach.  It is also relatively flat and spread out compared to the others.  Despite that, however, it still managed to be pretty warren-like and quite neat.  We wandered around a bit, finally choosing to eat at a place called La Beluga Blu.  We ordered bruschetta with tomato, cheese, and prosciutto ham, very tasty.  I can’t remember what Michelle had (sorry!), but my salami and buffalo mozzarella on focaccia was great.  Addison had a burger.

After lunch we wandered around a bit and visited the pharmacy.  Pharmacies in Italy all have these cool animated LED green cross signs.  Headed back to the harbor and purchased three one-way (south) hop-on hop-off tickets on the boat for fifteen euros each.  We waited a bit for the boat to arrive, intending to take it to the fourth town, Vernazza.

Vernazza is often described as the most picturesque of the five towns as it has a small beautiful harbor and a nifty watch tower.  I’d agree with that.  Their gelato, on the other hand (at least at the place we had)…  Michelle had strawberry, Addison coffee, and I mixed the two (maybe that is why I didn’t like it, haha, that’s pretty messed up taste-wise).  While we were eating our gelato we watched some construction going on.  What was cool was that they had this small motorized tread-based thing to haul materials with and used a motor to lift items through the second (third, to us Americans) story window in a bucket.  Vernazza is also interesting in that it is on a peninsula and even deep in town we saw a grotto with water beyond.

Hopped on the boat to Manarola, second of the towns (skipping Corniglia, of course, as it has no access to the sea).  Manarola by far had the coolest harbor features.  Just after getting off the boat (and having the gangplank buck up a couple of feet when I was on it due to a big wave) we went through this narrow cleft in the rock and emerged in the harbor proper (the boat being too big to enter).  The harbor had a few row boats and boats with small outboards in it but by far the coolest thing was a small clear deep cove that people were jumping off of a large rock into.  In addition, a stream ran through town and emptied via a five or ten foot sliding rock type fall into the ocean.  It looked like an amusement park ride.  It being late we didn’t wander a whole bunch there.  As it was near the end of the day there were only one or two boat departures on the schedule and we wanted to be sure and catch it.  No matter, hanging out at the harbor was perfectly fine by us!

Soon the boat to Riomaggiore arrived.  By this time Michelle was feeling a bit seasick so our boat travels could come to an end fast enough.  Got some beautiful shots of Riomaggiore from the boat (and the other towns earlier, as well).  Upon landing we did some menu shopping for dinner but most of the places near the harbor were predictably seafood heavy.  Did take the time to buy some giant one liter water bottles, however, stocking up for the travel day ahead of us, at a small market store.  Riomaggiore (and indeed much of Italy) has many little stores still, with great local produce (unbelievably large grapes) on display in front to draw shoppers in.

Ended up eating at Giammi Caffe.  It was a bit of a cluster.  Addison wanted steak but they were out so he settled for a ham and cheese sandwich.  Michelle and I wanted pasta with mushrooms but they were out of those too!  She ended up with pesto pasta which wasn’t that great and I ended up with ham and cheese tortellini with “meat”.  I have no idea what kind of meat — that matters, people!  While we were there they were playing a TV station with an Italian rapper’s video on it.  Very, very odd.

On the way up to our rooms we got some gelato at Bar Centrale.  Addison, unfortunately, dropped his and declined to get more (we offered, honest!).  Bought some Riomaggiore magnets and headed back to the room.  I got restless and made a solo trip down to the marina shortly before dark.  I managed to see Wales defeat Russia 2 to 0 and Slovakia and England tie at 0.  Once back up I talked with our neighbor Suzzane from New Jersey.  She is traveling about Italy with her sister from Germany.  We mainly talked about travel and she told a neat story about their travels in Croatia to find their ancestors’ town. Wrapped up the day with a small amount of blogging (mainly summarizing the day).

In hindsight I wish we had schedule another day for Cinque Terre.  A truly remarkable place, five incredible towns that manage to exist within — and even enhance — the natural beauty of the place.  Each town (well, we didn’t go to Corniglia but I’m sure it does as it is the hilltop one) managed to feel distinct yet each had the most incredible features, almost as if say the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Walt Disney World was made real.  Honestly, it was almost too incredible not to be by design…