Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre, Italy

 August 5-7, 2010

After leaving Varenna, Italy on a rainy Thursday morning, Ad and I headed to Cinque Terre, Italy’s five hillside villages located along the Italian Riviera by the Mediterranean Sea. Cinque Terre, which means “five lands," is a unique series of beautiful villages that are all “car-free” and only accessible on-foot or by train. From east to west, the seaside towns include Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso.

We arrived in Monterosso, our home for the next two nights, unpacked our swimsuits (or as our new French friend, Luc Jaujou likes to refer to them – “swimming costumes”), grabbed our towels, books and headed for the beach. If there is something I have realized during my travels, is that “beach” doesn’t always refer to huge amounts of beaming white sand covering an endless blue coastline. In Cinque Terre, it could mean beaches of desolate rocks, crashing blue waves and occasional topless women camped out on a lonely rock.

After our swim, we decided to enjoy a picnic of fresh bread, cheese, bresola, grapes, a jar of pesto and “vino delle Cinque Terre”. Cinque Terre is known as “home of pesto” and famous for their local white wine grown in the region. As we sat by the window in our room, we enjoyed our feast, the town chatter below us and an early night’s rest.

The next morning, we started with what has become our everyday morning ritual – a cappuccino, a croissant or the local bakery’s fresh pastry of the day. As we planned to hike and explore all five villages in one day, the Australian coupled sitting next to us explained to us that it would take “at least 5 hours to do it all”. Of course, this presented a challenge and Ad and I decided to plan to see all the villages in less than 3 hours.

As we started to hike out of Monterosso, we climbed a path that included a series of rocky steps and dirt paths along hillsides overlooking the Sea that seemed both relentless and endless. As we made our way around each hilltop, we were stunned with the views as well as the next village off in the distance, Vernazza.

We arrived in Vernazza exactly an hour later. As we arrived, this small, charming town on the water was bustling with locals grabbing their morning coffee and newspaper, exchanging ‘giorno’ (short for good morning in Italian) as they walked by one another. We stopped and enjoyed watching a few locals jumping off the end of the pier at low tide (roughly a 10 foot drop) and waiting for a high swell to bring them back up to lift themselves out of the water only to turn around and do it again.

We jumped back on the Cinque Terre trail – next stop: Corniglia. As we headed out on the trail, we found that this part of the trail seemed more forgiving than the route from Monterosso. Forty-five minutes later we arrived in the hillside town of Corniglia, the only town not directly on the water. This small and quaint hilltop town offered amazing views of the Riviera extending all the way down to the French Riviera coastline off in the distance.

Hiking down from Corniglia, we made our way around the hillside along a charming promenade, arriving thirty minutes later to village #4, Manarola. Once there, we enjoyed watching locals and tourists diving off rocks into the water, sunbathers finding a remote spot to catch the rays and delicious lunch of mussels and linguini and troffe, a local pasta and sea bass.

As we made our way from Manarola to Riomaggiore, the final village of the Cinque Terre, we enjoyed the unique promenade called Via dell’ Amore or “Walkway of Love”. This 15-minute section of the Cinque Terre trail offering a panorama view of the coastline is littered with colorful locks dangling from metal nets, displaying small tokens of the people’s commitment to their love for one another.

As a celebration for our journey across Cinque Terre (in 3 hours), Ad and I decided to enjoy a nice seafood dinner at a local restaurant in Monterosso called Ciak La Lampara. We noticed this restaurant as we continued to walk by and watch the chef/owner prepare his infamous fish soup dinner (or Zuppa de Pesce) in the restaurant’s window each evening.

Once seated, we ordered the Risotto alla Mare (risotto with seafood) for two, a bottle of Cinque Terre Levante (local white wine from the town of Levanto) and some Pellegrino. Sitting at small tables lined up closely next to one another, we sat next to a young Italian couple. As they listened to our conversation, they proceeded to giggle after hearing our own interpretations of some the local street signs we found cryptic to us – ‘the sign means drunken sailor who can’t find his way around town’; ‘no, no --it means don’t poop here’. (We found out later that the signs were referring to the location of ATMs.)

It was at that moment that I realized I didn’t want to come back to Europe without truly being fluent in another language; and what language would it be? – Pig-Latin, of course. Since most Europeans know multiple languages including English, I bet this would be the only language that they would have no idea what you are saying!

After leaving Monterosso we headed to Rome, the capital of Italy rich in history and culture. I can’t wait!
Ciao'
Athysay and Damah