After spending the Friday in Milan, Bethany and I turned around and woke up at 7 yesterday morning to catch the first of two trains to Cinque Terre. We took our first train to La Speza, where we caught a second train to Corniglia Island in the Cinque Terre.
Our two thankfully uneventful rides got us to Corniglia just after 1:00. But before I move on, I should probably amend the "uneventful" part and add in when I cried on the train.
No. Really. I cried. We were nearly to Corniglia when I asked Bethany when she thought we might get our first view of the ocean. At this time, we had been in a tunnel for the past few minutes and, no sooner were the words out of my mouth, than the train emerged from the tunnel and I looked to my left to see nothing but wide ocean (okay... wide sea; it was the Ligurian Sea). All I could see up, down, out, and around in any direction was sparkling, diamond sea. And I cried.
Well, to be perfectly accurate, first I screamed and jumped out of my seat. Then I cried for about thirty seconds. Lee Ann Womack sang in my ear and I got really emotional over seeing so much beautiful water in one place. I'm not proud of it, but Bethany spread it around to everyone we associate with in Florence, so now the whole school knows I cried upon seeing the sea in Cinque Terre. And now you do, too. There are more embarrassing things that could happen.
Luckily, we were only a few minutes from Corniglia at the point where I lost my head and I was able to pull myself together before we got off the train.
It's good that the islands in Cinque Terre aren't too big. It didn't take much for Bethany and me to find our hostel after getting off the train in Corniglia. We had a very long hike in the sun (it was warm Saturday) to the top of the hill our Bed and Breakfast was on, but after that we followed my Rick Steve's map to the neighborhood of the B&B.
Finding the neighborhood was no problem, but navigating it was a challenge. There's this thing they love in Italy where they change street names halfway down the street. So Bethany and I literally walked in a square, then a smaller square, then a smaller square looking for the B&B. It turns out the street we were on kind of goes like this:
Here you are on Via A. Walk ten feet to Via B. Walk fourteen feet to Via C. Turn left at Via A. Walk four feet to Via D. Turn left on Via C. Walk 200 feet to Via A. Turn right on Via A. Turn left on Via B. Walk two feet to Via A.
You have now reached your destination.
Whaaatever. The good news is, we made it, and Corniglia is so incredibly gorgeous that we didn't really mind all of the retracing our steps over and over.
We got to the B&B about an hour before our scheduled check-in time and the door was locked and no one was home. By this point we were ready for lunch, so we walked back to a little cafe we had seen on the next street over and ordered pesto lasagna with fresh-squeezed lemon juice. The lemon juice was fantastic, but the lasagna tasted like leftovers. It probably was, too, since we watched the guy pull it out of the microwave. It wasn't bad thought, and we left lunch only a few minutes before our scheduled check-in time.
There was no need to rush though, since we sat for fifteen minutes outside the B&B and no one came for us. Bethany finally called the number on the sign outside the door and a woman told her someone would be there for us in a few minutes, then hung up. So we waited another twenty minutes until we heard huffing and puffing from the alley next to the B&B. An old man clutching a set of keys in one hand and the stitch in his side in the other hand came around the corner and walked past Bethany, directly up to me. He then proceded, amid all of the coughing and wheezing, to spit a whole bunch of Italian at me while I stood there presumably looking like an idiot.
Since Bethany speaks more Italian than I do, I kept looking at her over the guy's shoulder for help, but he ignored me and kept talking, despite my repeated "I don't speak Italian."
Bethany finally got the guy's attention and was able to explain to him that we had a reservation and needed let into our room.
It took awhile for him to figure out why we were there, and then twice as long for him to get up the stairs, but the guy finally showed us to our room. And fortunately, this B&B was very nice. There was a common dining room with two bedrooms leading off of it - one for me and Bethany, and one for another pair of guests. As soon as we were in the room, the guy handed me the keys and shuffled off without another word.
"When do we pay?" Bethany asked, but the guy just looked at her, then kept going. Whatever. If we paid, we paid. If not, if not, I guess.
We took a few minutes to unwind and admire our fantastic sea view, then set off to explore.
The highlight of Riomaggiore is the famous Via dell'Amore walkway. The walk takes you on a scenic tour around a hillside overhanging the sea. Along the way, we saw many ribbons and locks attached to the netting holding the cliff together. Many of these tokens featured the names of those who had left them encircled with hearts, just like the locks hanging around Ponte Vecchio on the Arno.
After a little way, you had the option of continuing along the marked trail, or descending into more treacherous trails down along the sea. Bethany and I picked one of these trails and very carefully climbed and scooted our way down to sea level, where we sat inches from the crashing waves until we were ready to move on.
I consulted with Rick Steve's, and he told me the best island to go to for dinner and nightlife was Vernazza (which Bethany and I prefer to pronounce Ver-NAHT-za). As soon as we stepped off the train, we realized we had made a mistake in going to Vernazza. We had seen a sign in the train station warning that Vernazza was mainly shut down to a devastating mudslide in October 2011, but we had no idea until we got there how bad it really was. The first thing I thought of when I got off that train was the day my church youth group toured the Ninth Ward in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Total devastation. You could see the water level lines on all of the abandoned homes and shops. Every building we passed was caked in mud and gutted. Shopvacs sat in the streets, some humming and some abandoned. Every once in a while, we would pass a small group of men shoveling mud out of a doorway or hauling sandbags into or out of the island. Nothing was open. There was no nightlife and not a single place to eat. I doubt we saw more than ten people the whole time we were there. A few stray dogs and cats were still hanging around, but they were all dirty and ran away from us. We didn't hear any signs of life.
Bethany and I finally made our way to the harbor as night fell over the Vernazza ghost town. We sat on a rock and let the waves wash up to where they nearly touched our toes. We were the only two people in sight. We sat in silence and stared out over the endless water as dusk turned into night and the air turned chilly. Despite the devastation behind us, I have only known a few places in my life that come close to matching the perfect serenity of that rock in that harbor. I could have sat there forever and been overwhelmingly at ease and content, except that Bethany and I both began getting hungry.
Reluctantly, we pulled ourselves away from the water long after sunset and picked our way through the rubble and back to the train station.
We decided to head instead to Manarola and try to find food there. We lucked out in finding a main street leading down into the ocean that had many quaint giftshops and promising-looking restaurants. Rick Steves recommended we get dinner at a restaurant on this main strip called Trattoria Il Porticciolo, so that's exactly what we did. And boy were we lucky Vernazza had been closed.
We sat in a heated outdoor room looking down the street toward the water. A handsome waiter brought us endless bread with baby green tomatoes and olive oil to munch on while we waited for our main courses. Bethany got lobster (batti batti) ravioli and I got spaghetti batti batti, spaghetti drenched in red sauce mixed with little bits of lobster and served with a giant lobster tail on the side. It was THE BEST spaghetti I have ever had. We were so happy with our meals, and the waiter was so cute and sweet, that we decided to go all out and order dessert as well. Our waiter let us each pick which kind of cake we wanted from a dessert display, then he brought us each a slice of both selected cakes, garnished with fruit, whipped cream, and chocolate candies.
It was the most exciting dessert I've ever seen. There was also a note in the Rick Steve's book that said if we showed the book, we could each get a free glass of sciacchetra dessert wine. Also some of the best wine I've ever had. This was my first dessert wine, and it was so smooth and rich, it was absolutely delicious. Even Bethany was won over and she had hesitated to get it since she isn't normally a fan of dessert wines.
That meal was easily the biggest I've eaten in Italy, and Bethany and I both literally waddled home after it. When we left, our waiter told us to "Come back when you speak Italy."
Once we caught the train back to Corniglia, we had exactly 382 stairs to climb to get up to the town, then back to our B&B. By this point it was after midnight, there were no lights, we both had food babies, and it was painfully slow going. But we made it safe and sound and spent the rest of the evening watching "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on Italian TV before we fell asleep.
This morning, it rained. We decided to sleep in a little because of this, but we were still out the door around 9:30 and on our way to find the landlord and return the room keys. We had an address for an office on the other side of the island, so we packed up all of our belongings and set off in the drizzle.
We were about five minutes from the B&B when we saw the man from the rental agency limping along a side street. Bethany flagged him down and asked him in Italian where we needed to go to pay for our night. He didn't answer, but instead took the €50 note motioned for us to follow him. So we walked about another five minutes to a house and followed him inside. This was obviously where he lived; an elderly woman was watching TV and eating toast in a room just to the left of where we stood. The man went off into another room and came back with a cigar box full of money from which he extracted our change. He handed the change to me without a word and then went to sit down in the room with the woman.
Bethany and I hesitated for about a minute, then let ourselves out.
Our first stop after that strange experience was coffee and a train to Monterosso al Mare to explore the beach. The beaches in Monterosso our less rocky than on the four other islands. There are actually excellent sand beaches, that were clearly very touristy in the summer, but were nearly vacant in early March.
It had stopped raining by this point and was warm enough that we could kick off our shoes, roll up our jeans and run around in the surf for awhile. We were distracted at this point by all of the pretty beach rocks and spent literally the next hour and a half scouring the beach for the prettiest stones, pausing every once in awhile to climb the giant rocks sticking up out of the beach.
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| Three shots of me exploring the beach. You will have to drag me back to America in May. |
The place looked five star, with white tablecloths, tuxedoed waiters, fancy artwork on the walls, and flowers on every table. Plus we could tell just looking up at it from the beach below that this place had one of the nicest views around.
But, seeing nowhere else to eat and already being in love with the Belvedere, we decided to attempt it. To the relief of us both, as we stood waiting in the entryway to be seated, we noticed most of the other patrons were dressed casually, some even in work clothes grottier than our two-day, slept-in outfits. A penguined waiter ushered us to one of the fancy tables with a nice view overlooking the sea and told us the day's specials in near-perfect English.
Since everything on the menu looked so good, Bethany and I split a grilled swordfish steak, grilled vegetables, penne scampi, and a basket of rolls. We figured why not go all out and make this our only meal for the day?
Like last night, the service was prompt and the food was out of this world. Honestly, I've never in my life eaten better than I did these past two days. Everything was perfect and if I could only eat the meals I ate this weekend for the rest of my life, I don't think I would ever complain.
We both left stuffed and thoroughly satisfied. In an effort to digest, we took a very leisurely stroll to the other end of the beach to see Il Gigante, a giant statue of Neptune carved into a rock coming out of the sea. My tour book said this massive structure once held a trident which supported a private dance floor that hung out over the waves. Unfortunately, the dance floor collapsed years ago and was never replaced. But Il Gigante still looks cool.
After that, we hiked up another cliff to the local cemetery. It may not sound like a great way to end a weekend getaway, but the view overlooking the sea was another one not to be missed, and the cemetery itself was very beautiful and well-kept with little gardens and charming, fancy headstones. I found the Italian headstones with their photos of those who had passed morbidly interesting.
We sat up in the cemetery, staring - once again - at the sea for a long time. We then made our way back down to the train station just before sundown and took the last train home to Firenze.
So all in all, this has been a fantastic weekend. Even with the rain this morning and the constant threat of rain all weekend, Cinque Terre was the most amazing and gorgeous place I have ever seen in my entire life. I'm so excited now for the Greece islands in just two weeks! I was iffy about this spring break trip before I discovered the majesty of the sea and its power to make me cry. I feel like I should have known I would have this reaction, considering it's the sea and all, but I didn't. And now all of my friends are already talking about bringing tissues with us when we go to Santorini. Oh well. Cosi va...
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