Hittin' the Coast at Cinque Terra

We got up bright and early on Wednesday morning and got dressed and ready to go.  We had been checking the weather and weren't sure how nice it would be on the coast since a rain storm was starting to move in.  We dressed in jeans and good hiking shoes and took our rain jackets and umbrellas and took off.  We stopped along the drive at a "rest stop" with a cafe and we each got a surprisingly tasty croissant and Dad and I had a cappuccino.  After our food stop we got back on the autostrada and headed towards the coast.  We made one wrong turn and started heading into the mountains but after 10 or 15 minutes we found an exit and were able to turn around.  During that little side trip it was poring rain and I was praying we weren't going to get to the coastal cities and have to turn around because we couldn't walk through and see the Cinque Terra.  We got back on the right autostrada and made it through La Spezia and up the winding road around the hill to the cliff coast and finally after some seriously skilled driving on my Dad's part made it to Riomaggiore the first of the five Cinque Terra cities.  It was here in there parking structure we parked for the day.  Now I say parking structure with a very vague definition as the parking structure was tiny and built in the side of the hill.  We found a spot, one of the last ones, and headed out to the city.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cinque Terra it is a group of 5 coast cliff hanging cities north of Pisa and south of Genoa.  The cities are really more like villages mostly small and quaint fishing villages that are connected by hiking paths.  Cinque Terra is now a national park and all visitors pay a park fee to get in and walk along the paths.

We started in the southern most city of Riomaggiore and walked through the city to the park entrance and bought our day passes.  Then we walked along the easy to manage and scenic Via dell'Amore to the next city Manarola.  The path is wide and paved and an easy walk which gets its name from the graffiti that covers the cliffs along the way.  The villages were extremely isolated and remote until the 1940s when the path was built and reinforced allowing young people to meet with people from the other villages.  It soon became the spot for young lovers to meet and they have since written of their love on the walls of the cliffs and cement reinforcements.  If you don't like graffiti this is not the place to visit.

We walked through Manarola and after some debate about the difficulty of the next path we decided to try it.  Mom wasn't so sure but we figured we could make if the majority of the way and catch the shuttle van up to the city skipping the almost 400 steep steps up the hill to the city center.  So we opted for the extra exercise and walked the path.  It wasn't that bad a little rougher, not a paved path and a little more hilly.  There was some up and down but we all walked it.  I'm so proud of my Mom for hiking it with Dad and I only a year after major back surgery.  The scenery was amazing and although it would have been nice to have good warm weather it was made all the more striking because it was starting to storm.  The waves were crashing all around and the sky was cloudy and the wind was blowing.  It all combined to make are rough and beautiful environment for us to walk through.  We did the walk to the train station then hiked up the hill a bit to the shuttle bus stop.  We waited and when the bus driver came the line waiting to get on was long.  We didn't make it on but the driver assured us another bus would be along in the next 10 minutes.  We waited and it started raining (of course) but by the time we got on our jackets and pulled out the umbrellas it had more or less stopped.  We were the second group on the next bus after a couple of british women traveling through the area who had also missed the first bus.  We were shuttled up the steep hill to the high city of Corniglia.

We walked around Corniglia a bit and stopped off at a local cafe to get some lunch.  Corniglia is famous for its wine which Dad and I shared a quarter liter of along with a salad we split.  Mom and I split the pesto pasta (pesto being a local favorite as the Cinque Terra and Genoa are the birthplace of the stuff) and Dad had a panini of some kind.  We took our time ate and enjoyed the atmosphere and talked with the Swedish women sitting next to us.  After our lunch and a sketchy bathroom stop we took the shuttle back down the hill to the train station and opted to take the train to Vernazza the 4th city.

Vernazza is a beautiful and quaint fishing village with it's own little harbor and church by the sea.  We walked through and went into the church.  We walked around the side of the harbor and took a few minutes to watch a local guy walking around in his white underware and a shirt.  We think he took his pants off to help bring in some of the boats for the upcoming storm.  He strutted around waiting for the other guys to get the boats close to shore.  I will say he did have great legs and a nice butt, but really is it necessary to show it off like that.  I was a little taken aback to see such scenery during my trip to Cinque Terra especially considering it wasn't exactly warm beach weather.

We walked back through the city to the train station and made a run for a train I thought was going to Minters the last of the 5 cities.  Unfortunately we got o the train going the other direction back to Corniglia, my bad!  We got off to check the train schedule going back to Monterosso but the next train wasn't for an hour.  We opted to wait the 10 minutes and take the train back to Manarola and then walk the Via dell'Amore again.  The second walk on the Via dell'Amore was just as beautiful and a little more rugged as the weather was getting worse.  When we got back to Riomaggiore we walked all the way up the city to the parking area and got our car.  After that we opted to skip Monterosso as the weather was deteriorating and drove off into the hill and back to La Spezia.  Along the way Melba got a little confused and we took a wrong turn and ended up going down the hill on an even windier road then the one we went up.  We went through some small town along the way but I can't remember the name of it now.  But once we made it down the hill it was an easy drive from La Spezia back to Pisa where we stopped and did the sacrilegious thing and went to McDonald's for a quick dinner then headed back to our hotel as we were all knackered.  There we ate some chocolate and watched CNN before going to bed.