Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
After an evening of giggling and smelly feet, I arrived in Cinque Terre early Sunday morning to find a town bathed in beautiful, warm sunshine - the heat was a bit of a shock to the system, which over the past few weeks has seen as much sunshine as a fat kid on a diet sees cupcakes.
Cinque Terre (which means 'Five Lands' in Italian) are these five little fishing villages dotted along a stretch of about 10km along the north-west coast of Italy. We were staying in the second village called Vernazza. The villages are famous for their brightly coloured houses and apartments that cling precariously to cliff faces, so much so that you feel if you jumped out your window you could land in the ocean! They are also famous for the beautiful coastal hike that connects the five villages through a countryside sprinkled with vineyards, olive groves, and offers dramatic ocean views the whole way along. Cinque Terre has also been UNESCO Heritage listed, which is another Heritage site I can tick off my list as having visited, along with other such as Plitvice Lakes and Lucerne! Lucky me!
Mum wasn't arriving until late afternoon from her jaunt in Paris, and I wasn't able to check into our apartment until 2pm which left my slightly stranded with my enormous pack, day pack and 7kg bag of souvenirs. What's a girl to do, especially when she's busting to use the bathroom?! After quick consultation with one of the locals, I discovered that the only public toilet is at the train station - up the hill, where I had just came from. b*****. So up I trudged, only to find that the 'toilet' was a delightful hole in the ground that you have to squat over, trying to maneuver yourself into a position that will allow you to execute the task with the least amount of fuss and discomfort.
So, I ended up sitting on a little park bench on the waterfront, watching the colourful little fishing boats bob up and down on the waves, and listening to the old Italian men gossiping amongst each other while they sat out the front of their small stores. Eventually, 2pm rolled around and I hauled my luggage up the 200-odd stairs to the apartment Mum and I would be renting for three nights. Considering I was carrying about an extra third of my body weight, I was absolutely puffed! I had to keep stopping after every set of stairs to catch my breath - but I would whip out my camera so I could pretend I was taking a picture of that 'little window over there' and therefore appear a lot more fit than I actually am!
Ten minutes and about 5kg of weight loss later, I finally made it to the apartment. After ringing the bell four times or so times with no answer, I sat down on the small table setting out front and downed my bottle of water. There were some guys sitting on some steps just below me (who were American and Irish, judging by their accents) who were attempting to engage the old Italian woman across the way in conversation. I love speaking to Italians. They don't care about language barriers. They don't care that they don't speak English, or that you don't speak Italian. They'll just jabber away at you in Italian anyway, while you stand there with a puzzled look on your face and trying your best to speak slow, broken English. But somehow, through much sign language and attempted translation, you both get your point across. As was the case with Elisabetta, our landlady. After spotting me sitting at her outdoor setting, she called from the apartment above 'Madame! Madame!' and beckoned for me to come upstairs. Turns out that she'd had a cancellation or something - although we had booked a room without a sea view, we were now staying in a sea view room for two of the nights and then moving to a room without a view for our last night! Wonderful! While Elisabetta finished cleaning the room, I made my way up to the roof balcony to check out the view - absolutely amazing. One of the most beautiful things these eyes have seen in a long time. We were in one of the highest apartments in the entire village, so had a view across the the rooftops, and down the coast towards the village of Monterosso. Stunning.
I got a call from Mum saying that she had missed her train to Vernazza, and therefore wouldn't be arriving until after 4pm. Free from the burden of my luggage, I headed back into the town centre to have a walk around before collecting Mum from the station. I decided to go lie on the rocks hear the harbour in the sunshine, and listen to my iPod. I had uploaded some podcasts of the Hamish and Andy radio program onto my iPod before I left, so I decided I would listen to a few of them. If you haven't heard of Hamish and Andy, you are missing out! They are absolutely hilarious. So, once again, I was sitting by myself in the sunshine cackling like a crazy woman (getting funny looks from those around me) except this time no one could really tell why I was laughing - usually I have my nose in a book so everyone can work out the source of the hilarity. So I kept having to hold up my iPod in front of my face so people wouldn't think I was completely insane!
I finally got the text from Mum to say that she had arrived, so I made my way back up the hill to the station to meet her. I was so excited about showing Mum our room! I knew that she would be blown away by the view. After trudging up the 200-odd stair to our apartment, we dumped her bags and I dragged her up to the roof. And I was right - she was immediately in love with Cinque Terre.
We decided that we would take full advantage of that magnificent view by making ourselves an Italian picnic for dinner, so we headed into the town centre to grab some supplies. Stocked up with some foccacia, pesto, cream cheese, tomato, sausage, olive oil and red wine, we feasted on the roof terrace eating up not only our food, but the view before us. We came to a little hurdle when we tried to open our bottle of wine, however. Reliant on Australia's ingenious screw top bottles, we had completely forgotten that we would need a corkscrew to open our wine. Ooops. After trying to uncork the wine by pushing it into the bottle (and failing), I set off down the stairs with our wine to find Elisabetta, who would hopefully have a corkscrew. But on my way down, I noticed a couple sitting drinking wine a few balconies over, with a corkscrew sitting proudly in the middle of their table. After calling out to them and making gestures with my bottle of wine, they nodded their heads and I began the difficult task of climbing over four sets of railings with my wine to reach the corkscrew. After returning with my now uncorked bottle of red, Mum and I did some totally cheesy toasting (which you can see in my photos...) while the sun set across the ocean.
The next day would see us do the main thing that we had come to Cinque Terre for - the ocean walk. We started in Monterosso and walked for about 2.5 hours before reaching Vernazza. It was a beautiful walk, which was mildly challenging at times, but altogether pleasant and lots of fun. It was interesting to note the people we passed - as the path wasn't incredibly wide, Mum and I would generally stand off to the side to let people pass. Without fail, the Aussies would always say hello and thanks you for letting them through. Some other nationalities (take a guess who) wouldn't even acknowledge our existence as they shoved past! Rude people really make my blood boil... I even had one woman hold her finger up at me as if to say 'you had better stop for me because I'm sure as hell not polite enough to move aside even though I'm right next to a plateau and you'll probably fall into the bushes if you move off the path'. Grrrrrr...
After a lunch of pizza and pistachio gelato, we set off again toward the next village, Corniglia. The walk from Vernazza to Corniglia was just as beautiful, but the Corniglia was nowhere near as beautiful as Vernazza. Nor did it seems to have a bar! Mum and I were hanging out for a drink after a hard day's walking, but could not find one place that we could sit and drink while looking at the ocean. So we caught the train back to Vernazza, bought some salad from the local supermarket and sat on our roof for dinner again. Mum had bought me some hair dye with her, which I very excitedly applied that evening! She had also bought a hairdryer and straightener with her, so my hair had quite the royal treatment! My poor neglected tresses were beautiful and shiny for the first time in over two months! Small things make you incredibly happy when you're backpacking...
Needless to say, Mum and I had a very good night's sleep that night!
After an athlete's breakfast of chocolate croissants from the bakery, Mum and I bummed around the harbour and souvenir shops, check out the cemetery and ate pesto gnocchi and more pistachio gelato until it was time to move our things to the apartment without a view for our last night. When we were all settled in what appeared to be the spare bedroom of Elisabetta's mother in law's home, we caught the train to Corniglia to complete our walk to the last two towns, Manarola and Riomaggiore. They were much kinder incline, with part of the walk even paved for disabled access. My favourite part of the walk was between Manarola and Riomaggiore, a part called 'Via Del Amore' - Lover's Lane. It has become customer for couples passing through Vie Del Amore to take a padlock, write their names on it, and lock it to one part of the railing beside the ocean. There are literally hundreds of locks there today!
Funny thing happened in Riomaggiore - I met up with a guy called Lachie who I had met two other times in my travels! We first ran into each other in Split, Croatia. Next in Ljubljana, Slovenia. And now I had run into him again in the tiny fishing village of Riomaggiore. He said he's in the last leg of his trip now, so I'd be surprised if we run into each other again (though it would be funny if we did!).
Mum and I had about a 40 minute wait at the train station before our train back to Vernazza would arrive, so we sat there sharing my iPod listening to more Hamish and Andy podcasts, and once again giggling like crazy people. When the train arrived we hopped on, only to discover we had gotten on the wrong one (that became clear when we went whizzing past Vernazza without stopping)! Turns out we had gotten on the express service from Riomaggiore to Monterosso - in other words, from one end of Cinque Terre to the other. And a train to Vernazza wasn't leaving for over an hour. Oops. Luckily though, we had forgotten to grab the pesto and oil from the cupboard when we moved rooms that afternoon, so I had ran up and grabbed it and put it in my backpack before catching the train. So while it had been annoying to lug around all afternoon, it was actually a blessing, as we could grab some bread and make a picnic dinner while we waited for the train!
When we finally got back to our apartment, we packed our things in preparation for our early 7am departure to Cortona, in Tuscany.
Talk to you soon!
Love Hayley x
- comments